Skip to main content

tv   U.S. Senate  CSPAN  November 8, 2012 12:00pm-5:00pm EST

12:00 pm
so many businesses and people would have been invested and there would have been more going around. everybody has ideas and the thing that we really need to focus on is alternative fuels in my opinion because with alternative fuels there are other people that can have a chance to create their idea into so much, not so much bigger oil
12:01 pm
in the sense to where everybody gets a piece of the pie. >> host: on your comment about how much money was spent come here is usa today tuesday versus the first caucus of the supreme court's 2010 citizens united decision which allows unlimited corporate and union money braces and all spending by candidates, party and outside groups is projected to hit an unprecedented 6 billion when all expenses are tallied. and then on this issue of whether or not these big wealthy donors got their money's worth here is sheldon adelson, the biggest single donor in political history supported eight candidates through with super pacs all of them lost on tuesday. shirley and newcastle pennsylvania, republican caller. go ahead. >> caller: thank you. the people are so tired of the fighting in washington. like the one candidate said, if
12:02 pm
they don't do their job they do not get paid. we, the people come have got to start taking these matters into hands because we are sick of it. and, you know, what i would like to tell john boehner is don't give in to this craziness. this is nothing but craziness. and i watched harry reid yesterday. you know, he talked and he talked and he really said nothing. then he went on about dance, dance, dance and i thought to myself all you do is dance around with these bills that they send. the house will have a bill, they send it to the senate and what does he do? dances around it and never addresses it. >> host: know by partisanship than for you? >> caller: no, absolutely none. then when he left the stage and was walking off, the man -- i
12:03 pm
feel bad for him that he just can't get it together -- he grabbed ahold of the flag. he was falling. then he grabbed ahold of low wall and at that point i said uh oh that man needs to go home. he's too old to be there. he doesn't do his job and is collecting a big paycheck. >> host: we covered that news conference. you probably watched it on c-span, go over to the site, c-span.org if you want to watch the entire press conference with senate majority leader harry reid. on facebook here is what wendi has to say. congratulations to all incoming and extended leadership. get it together and get to work. we are watching and we are done supporting the game. buckle up, get busy. and then carolyn on atwitter who goes by gun toting room for debate? no, they have to move left to meet our president.
12:04 pm
maryland, democratic caller thomas. you're next. what did you vote and what was your message to washington? thomas? i've got to push the button. you are on the air. go ahead. >> caller: yes i would first like to congratulate the american people on using good sense by reelecting a president. mr. romney had no plans. he was just offering the opposite of what the president was presenting to the american people. have no plan for anything. i don't know how anybody in his position could get as far as he did with nothing to offer the american people. the other thing -- i just don't understand how with the american people would think to even consider him as the presidential candidate. he had absolutely nothing to offer. everything he offered was nonexistent or i will just do the president isn't doing. >> host: but the ask you, you
12:05 pm
sound like you're passionately supportive of the president. >> caller: i'm passionate for the country. i don't care who obama our romney is. i want somebody that will help the american people to progress. i want to see america -- >> host: you want compromise? >> caller: i want compromise, yes. but i'm going to tell you this, and make no mistake about it, we have people in this country that have completely destroyed rather than try to compromise and try to bring the government to some sort of conclusion where everybody will benefit. some people in this country feel as though other people should not exist or have any benefit and they would do everything possible, spend all their money, disrupt the government and do whatever they can to prevent other people from having a happy life. >> host: let me ask you this. do you think that president obama should govern as if he has a mandate? how far should he pushed, should he be aggressive? >> caller: he has to be aggressive because if he doesn't
12:06 pm
-- >> host: is that compromise though? >> caller: you can be aggressive and still compromise. let me say this, the congress is the tea party for and if obama or romney or the other was president we would still have trouble because the tea party has an agenda and we have a problem on our hands i don't know how we are going to resolve it the president has to operate by mandate or fee ought to get as much done as he can. >> host: in usa today president bush -- the democrats are concerned that and don't think that president obama will make what they said is the same mistake bush made in 2004 soon after defeating senator john kerry
12:07 pm
by the way, a little color from you from usa today about president obama's troup from chicago to wednesday -- i need from chicago to washington on wednesday. on the flight home, air force one colonel scott kronor brought the president a sheet cake to congratulate him to pose for pictures 63j kearney said a question done on the president there is somebody flying the plane, right? by wednesday evening he was back to work at the white house. we will go to jim next in tennessee. independent caller. we are talking about your vote and what it means. what was the message you were trying to send to the congress and the white house. >> caller: yes. am i on the air? >> host: you are on the air, jim. >> caller: yes, ma'am. i was watching the show as i try to come and i think we as the american public are kind of blind. you know, we like to be like a
12:08 pm
little kitten and have our chin scratched and when we have our chance scratched we close our eyes. we noted in today's society we are living longer and longer than we have 50 or 60 years ago. automation makes less and less jobs. there are so many computers that one can sit behind and that can be kept. with less and less jobs because of automation, more and more people are living longer with the longevity that they are i don't know the answer. anybody that says they are going to create another 2.5 million jobs or 150,000 newmar jobs are the people that are losing jobs every month. i think they are getting their chance scratched, closing their eyes like the cats do. i don't know the answer but i wish there was one. >> host: we are going to keep taking phone calls on this. how you voted on tuesday and what that means, when you were trying to say with your vote to washington.
12:09 pm
first i want to update you on some of the races across the country that were not call on tuesday night, were not called in the morning on tuesday either but have resulted in some victories here. we will start with the north dakota senate rate for the democrat there will be coming to senate. she beat the republican. she will join 19 other women in the senate to come up with 20 which is the record for women serving in the senate and then arizona and kirkpatrick democratic candidate and jonathan hunton, a republican event in california 26th district also the democratic when julie of the tony strickland, the republican, and then also michigan first dan, the republican in a four way race is the victor in michigan first district. those are some of the races that have been called. there are a few other out standing once. go to our website come
12:10 pm
c-span.org, and then also as i told you yesterday in the presidential race, in florida has yet to be called here is the absentee ballot voting delay to push right on the floor of the election. we don't know where the 29 electoral votes will go but have made every outcome of the presidential election. back to the topic here. what was your message to washington? a lot of newspaper articles this morning about the fiscal the cliff and that is what faces -- >> we will leave this portion of this morning's washington journal now to go live to the american enterprise institute for panel discussions on the election with fox news channel commentator michael barone, inside out columnist norman borkenstein and others. it is just beginning. this is live coverage from c-span2.
12:11 pm
>> to start the aei series in 1982. he is with us here today been lautenberg and the late richard scamen were the people to look at the intersection of democracy and public often opinion data in the 1970 book "the real majority." they told us how important changing demographics would be to future e elections come indigenous election de pass braking insights have been confirmed. latinos or a larger share of the electorate than four years ago, and they voted as this new issue of aei's political report shows solidly for president obama. if romney had done as well with hispanics out as ronald reagan in 1984 and bush in 2004, the outcome of this election would have been different. but in the 2003 co 2010 census, asians were the fastest-growing ethnic group in the country, and in this election they also voted heavily for the president. african-americans are a very slow growing demographic group, but their turnout did not
12:12 pm
decline this year and they gave more than 90% of their vote to the president. so, while demography is not destiny, it is certainly important. the demographer has said that demography is the best friend the democrats have. scamen and lautenberg talked about the date in housewife as the key to the vote in 1972. in this election, women were 53% of the electorate and they voted solidly for obama. men voted for romney. white, black and hispanic women were more democratic than white, black and hispanic men. the gender gap lives at 18 percentage points. women in ohio voted for obama and women -- man in ohio voted for romney. the marriage gap was a whopping 41 points with married voters decidedly republican in this election and the growing group of non-married overwhelmingly democratic. all of the data are on the new aei political report prepared by
12:13 pm
andrew and we also want to thank claude for getting this report and all of the latest tuitele data from 22 key demographic groups available for you today. the demographic changes are being felt in congress, too pure david wasserman of the cook political report wrote that for the first time ever, white men will no longer be a majority of the democratic caucus. in 1953, he says there were 98% of house democrats and 97% of house republicans. along with the demographic data the exit polls show that obama was able to diffuse the economic issue, and he won overwhelmingly on empathy. we are going to begin today with michael barone, who will tell us what happened and why. all of us on this panel have made election predictions over the course of election watching. sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong. in his washington examiner column yesterday, michaels said flatly i was wrong. that he followed up with the
12:14 pm
line i take some pleasure in finding that i have been wrong because it is an opportunity to learn more. i think we all share that sentiment. after michael's speech we are going to turn to henry olsen to talk about what defeat means for the republican party and the firing squad is assembled and the recrimination phase has begun. the "the washington times" said this morning in an editorial chris christi should be excommunicated. [laughter] and jenny that martin the head of the tea party patriots had this to say a lot romney he was from a week, moderate and in the beltway elite. it doesn't work, she said, and time to find someone else to increases our values. henry will tell us what lessons we should learn in this election and by the way called the popular vote on the nose in this election. he and meet deserve kudos over all. finally we are going to turn to norm to talk about what this means for the house and senate in the fiscal cliff. i should report that the book is
12:15 pm
even worse than it looks and it is once again -- here it is for all of you that have a great christmas gift, it is number 20 on amazon today. it's been on the best-seller list almost consistently. we want to ask norm but there were not the republicans have a lock on the house going forward and what the new congress is going to tell us about future defense leah michael, we will begin with you. >> thank you very much coming and for noting my solubility. it's been there since it of my law school classmates that nelson rockefeller was going to be defeated for reelection in 1966. i should have remained shy after the predictions about that one. barack obama won this election by a 50 to 48% margin. that may go up to around 58, 48 when the votes from california come in and california last time took five weeks to count its votes. the count them in five hours and
12:16 pm
brazil i'm not sure why california is so much less technologically advanced but there we are so all these figures are necessarily a little incomplete as they apply to the nation and there's other states with votes still out, too. it appears that obama will get a huge electoral advantage out of this relatively narrow popular vote margin. assuming that he carries florida where he is in the current towns ahead in the miami-dade county people are this year counting votes without the assistance of many republican and democratic lawyers. the electoral vote is 332 to 206. that was a margin in 2004 and only got 286 votes. obama was slightly less. it appears it gets 3:32. i think that there is a certain structural demographic advantage over democrats in the electoral college in this era.
12:17 pm
the democratic voters tend to be clustered in some big large metropolitan areas, and in particular neighborhoods and they give the democrats and initially advantage within the electoral college. president obama of 57% or more of the popular vote in 11 states and the district of columbia and the have 163 electoral votes. romney 113 states that they only have 140 electoral votes so basically the democrats have a bigger hunting ground, a larger base in the electoral college and a bigger hunting ground to go find those votes with 365, and apparently 332 this time if he doesn't carry it florida this has been compared to 2004. the reelection of an incumbent president by mobilizing supporters and getting them out. i think it is more like 1996
12:18 pm
which is a different election. what respect is it was turnout was way out from 105 million in 2000 to 122 million in 2004. the turnout was down in 1996. i have a hypothesis that when economic issues are at issue come economic condition to that contention and discontent in 2012 it doesn't bring voters as much to the polls has when one economic or cultural issues for peace issues were as they seem to be in 2004. in one respect it was like 1996 to 2004. clinton and bush both won with increased margins. quentin's 49% in 1996 would have been 51 or 52 if you split the vote according to the second
12:19 pm
choices, and that was an increase from the 43% in 1992. bush pushed his popular vote from 48% to 51%. obama however declined from 53% to 50 percent or possibly 51. his victory was a big government policy and obamacare will stay in place and obviously the president and the democratic majority in the senate will have a lot to say on the fiscal issues which norm i gather will discuss. less of a victory i think for big government ideas. clinton pivoted to the center on issues and while the voters were not enthused gave him larger percentages, obama ran a essentially a negative campaign against romney with the fire wall strategy spending about half of the convention dollars in energy. the three fire walls deutsch of florida, ohio and virginia which aside from indiana and north
12:20 pm
carolina is more appointed to victories of 2008 were the lowest percentage stays for barack obama. they have to those states together have 60 electoral votes they would appear to have to be entered 32 electoral votes without them he would have 272 which would meet only one other state would have tipped. there is not a likely candidate as you look down the percentages in this election. but it was nonetheless close. and i think it is this proved to be effective if you carry committees currently carrying florida by 46,000 votes and by 107,000 virginia by 100,000. the two injured 53,000 votes margins are responsible for his big electoral vote margin. it is a classic example of a high-risk strategy. the obama strategist are now going to be healed with some
12:21 pm
appropriateness as berlin and for employing the strategy. if a few numbers turn out a little differently they might be excoriated, but the fact is that they succeeded. when you compare the movement in the target states and the nontarget states if you look at the eight target states, colorado, florida, iowa, nevada, new hampshire, north carolina, ohio, virginia, obama's percentage only declined 1.5% from 2008. the rest of the country whether you're talking about the republican or democratic states or the kind of fleet target states in minnesota, pennsylvania, wisconsin, obama's percentage was down 2.8% about double the amount. he would carry the rest of the country aside from the target states but not as big of a percentage. one of the fascinating things at this election is the electorate that believes things are moving in the wrong direction and has been giving the contras dismal
12:22 pm
job ratings really electing a democratic president retained an even more republican and democratic sen met with some powerful assists from some republican candidates come and i wonder if they investigated the possibility of moles. anyway, the -- they've retained a republican house. an article in "the wall street journal" coming out tomorrow on this issue. the house issue. republicans according to the current town had a net loss of only six seats in the house and they start off as compared to 2012 results for 2010 when the one to 42. that's bigger than the majorities they had when new gingrich and denney hastert were speakers and that is despite apparently losing the council will change a little as the final results are tabulated.
12:23 pm
in california they are redistricting. republicans on the less have minimal losses. unlike -- this is another way that it's different from 1996. clinton won by a white majority. republicans barely held on to a majority in the house. this year obama won by a narrow majority in the republicans retained a big house and -- retain the relatively large house majority. although not as large as democrats have after 2006 and in 2008 elections. so, i think john boehner has some basis for saying that the president hasn't mandated so do house republicans. popular vote for the house republicans will probably come out to something like this in 5304 heat by which obama bet romney. that hasn't been fully tabulated yet. back about 20 years ago circa 1990, political scientists and london's said that republicans
12:24 pm
had a lock on the presidency and democrats had a lock on the house and they have all sorts of good reasons why this was so treated the democrats would pick the lock on the presidency in 1992 republicans broke the law, house and 1994. they won four of the six presidential elections and won a plurality of the popular vote in another. republicans have won majority since six out of eight elections for the house of representatives will. it's eight out of ten in the house of representatives. looking back from 2014 back 20 years to 1994 we will have had during that period for ten years a democratic president and a republican house. things that people in 1990 said could never happen. so it is something like the new
12:25 pm
normal. it's the period between 1990 to normal is republican president democratic house it seems to be the reverse. and that happens i think the demographic reason is the democratic votes are clustered in those big metropolitan areas. john mccain in 2008, excuse me, barack obama in 2008 won the 28 congressional districts with 80% of the vote or more and john mccain ten by that margin. that gives democrats a lot of votes in the big states, but it also means that there's not that many democrats in the chase and districts. this time obama carried the same number of states with that percentage and romney may have gotten that percentage in one or two districts in utah. maybe it's time for political scientists and abundance to rule out another rule about locks, who has a lot on which part of the government before that rule becomes obsolete. thank you. >> thank you. now tell us about the republican
12:26 pm
party. >> i think the temptation for the republicans is in any case with going through the stages of grief, first its bid to be engaged in denial and that is what you saw with the "the washington times" piece that was read today. it's understandable. it's the human response, but it would be very smart for the republicans to get further along in those stages and not stay in the denial stage very long. because when we look at what we have to face, it is not a hopeless picture but it's not a pretty one. carl once talked about the demographic changes and it's something that there is nothing that any republican candidate can do anything about. even if we stop immigration at 100% tomorrow which frankly no one wants to do when.
12:27 pm
the numbers that are already in the citizenship case that they're going to continue to decline over the next 20 years is the american electorate and shared of non-whites is when to continue to rise. the share of women in the electorate is going to slightly rise over that period because very frankly as people live longer men will die at 80 and women will live to 90 so we will have asia slightly larger share of women in the electorate as well. it is really not a good idea to ignore the facts. and one fact that i would like to focus on for my presentation today is an exit poll number that hasn't gotten a lot of attention but i am single-handedly trying to resurrect, and that is at the end of the exit poll, the voters were asked which of the following for qualities is the most important to you in selecting a president? romney one of the three of those
12:28 pm
and he won each of them by double-digit. he was the selection of the person, people who said that the most valued having a strong leader. she was the choice of the people who said the most value somebody who had a strong vision for the country. and he was the choice of the people who said the most valued having someone who shares their own values. the reason that mitt romney is not president today and i submit the reason why conservatism, generally has been locked in a 50 percent ceiling nationwide since the end of the cold war even though sometimes we can translate that into the majority in the house for this because of the last group is about a fifth of the electorate, and that question is the thing that the value most is somebody that cares about people like them, cares about people like me. mitt romney will be 81 to 18.
12:29 pm
when you lose 21% of the electorate by 63 points in light of the campaign that both candidates ran but particularly the campaign that the obama campaign ran which is simply a modernization of the campaign that democratic candidates turn to in difficult times ever since the new deal coalition won in 1932. in canada, the conservative party won the most recent elections by tarnishing the leader of the liberal party and in a parliamentary system that's basically akin to the campaigning against the presidential candidate. michael was a harvard professor who was a canadian native who returned to his country to run for parliament and was the liberal party candidate since the great depression to read what they did was they systematically tainted him as
12:30 pm
somebody who by his experience and his ideas was out of touch with the aspiration to the ordinary canadian and other television ads had a tag line that was brutal and succinct. he didn't come back for you to read the obama campaign wasn't so brutal in its message about was as brutal in its covert messages. the message that they decided on was essentially to say that the romney republican agenda, and they were always very clever in a time the man to his party is she and they are not running for you. and they did it on the level of values. for when and what was the war of women about? what was the contraception issue about? to say they don't understand you, they don't care about you, they don't value you, they are not runnfoyou? what were the tax cuts for the wealthy about? it was to talk to the
12:31 pm
blue-collar struggling worker, white, black, hispanic or asian whose troubles from paycheck to paycheck the mayor goes through a period of an insurance each year to say when it comes to the economy, they think that's the way is to give their friends more money and hope they do well by you. you don't believe that they are not running for you. latinos come about with the immigration issue was about. you want to be part of the american dream they won't even pass the dream act. they are not running for you. does anyone have a question as to why those series of arguments and that series of consistency that ties and interweaves into a mirage that makes sense? why 21% of americans who think that caring about people like them as the most important feature in the national leader why they would select the person that was making that argument against the person ever to be running to them.
12:32 pm
as much as a character of romney and as much as that is a caricature of republicans, a character only works if they make sense in light of the person being caricatured. yes said, propagandize itself has to have a kernel of truth at its core so what republicans need to do is to get your hard look at ourselves. republicans need to ask if that is how a fifth of americans overwhelmingly to receive us what do we need to do to change because americans of all shades and sex is what a government that is on their side that supports their values and isn't a paternalistic thing they want a lot of people there voted for president obama and voted for democrats also answered the question do you want a bigger government or smaller government on the smaller government side they don't believe is what the
12:33 pm
republican party is someone who understands that the use of government is legitimate and can be effective in giving them a hand up in american life they don't want a hand of society, they don't want as president obama said you were on your own society and they don't want the hand of society the heavy hand on society at republicans accused democrats of purveying. they want a limited but energetic government and the republican party has to recognize that's the crucial segment of the electorate they don't vote for republicans who could go for republicans. i am going to close with reading from a speech that i wrote about in the "national review" in an article called open your heart and it is what richard nixon said at the end of his acceptance speech for the 1968 nomination and i want to take a minute or 2i see the face of a
12:34 pm
child. he lives in a city. he is black or he is white. none of that matters. what matters is that he is an american. that child is more important than any politicians promise. he is america. he's a poet, scientist, a great teacher, proud craftsman. he's everything we have ever hoped to be and everything that we dare to dream to be. he sleeps the sleep of childhood and he dreams the dream of a child. yet when he awakens he awakens a nightmare of poverty and neglect and despair and feels in school. he ends of on welfare. it breaks his heart, and in the end it may take his life on a distant battlefield. to millions of children in this rich land, that is their
12:35 pm
prospect of the future. it's only a part of the america i see. i see another child tonight. he hears the train go by and dreams of faraway places where he would like to go. it seems like an impossible dream. he is held on his journey through life. a father who had to go to work before he finished sixth great sacrifice everything so that his sons could go to college. a gentle quaker mother with the passionate concern for peace quietly wept when he went to work and understand why he had to go. a great teacher, a remarkable football coach, inspirational manager encouraged him away. a courageous wife and children stood by him in victory and defeat and in his chosen profession of politics first there were scores and then hundreds and thousands and finally million support for his success and tonight he stands before you nominated for the president of the united states. you can see why i believe so in
12:36 pm
the american dream. the american revolution has been one and the dream has been true and what i ask you to do tonight is help me make that dream come true for millions tumid is an impossible dream today. ladies and gentlemen, when a republican leader can lead that word and read that speech without a hint of irony with a full measure of sensitivity and being able to insert a female pronoun for the mail as is appropriate, then the republican candidate will be rewarded with the presidency, the republican party will be rewarded for the majority for 80 years and will see what a republican government can do. thank you. now wanted the best-selling author norm borkenstein. >> first i want to suggest to everybody in the room and the audience if you have not read
12:37 pm
the pre-election memo which is the "national review" online, do it even though the election is over because it isn't just about having the numbers spot on, it is about what is behind. the analysis is the best you will see about why the electorate is breaking down the way it is and where it was going. and so i give him a shout out on that. now i want to say just a mia kobach as was said about michael we have all been wrong at times, and i was wrong on the choice of a running mate for mitt romney i predicted he would choose new gingrich, he was a mormon and polygamist. [laughter] i was wrong about the marijuana initiatives and i thought they would fail because if there would be a substantial number of supporters the what we call on monday morning and say was that the election yesterday?
12:38 pm
[laughter] and i missed that one as well. i also want to give a comment about someone who is perhaps the most astute proud of the kidder analyst and of course that is morris. and just say that the best wine of the year by far is from david axelrod who said the other day i've had a foot in my mouth many times over the years but it's always been my own. [laughter] thank you, david. every time you see dick mooris on television and believe me he will be on just as much as not more in the future. think about that. now, on to congress. i am not going to talk a lot about the elections themselves although it is of course so interesting that for a country which is fed up with politicians and politics angry at where we are and about the dysfunction
12:39 pm
that we do end up with the status quo but there's a couple interesting elements of that. six months or a year ago maybe three years ago, maybe three weeks ago none of us would have said with a lot of confidence much less democrats would pick up the seats in the senate or that they would lose only one of their own. there were 23 democratic seats going into the cycle we thought half of them are highly vulnerable. there were ten republican seats coming and going and we thought no more than one perhaps would be vulnerable. the republicans lost several of their own was a significant part attributable to what michael said, and the fact is of course the same thing happened in 2010 in the sweeping election where the republicans won 63 seats in the house and huge numbers of seats of the state level and legislative level, and could
12:40 pm
easily have captured a majority but didn't. it was because of the instances of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in states from nevada with sharon engel as the nominee to delaware with christine o'donnell and this time you could easily say it at least about two or probably more of the races. i don't think it's a matter of democrats have been inserted balls into the republican party. i think it relates to just what henry has been talking about. you have a party that is driven and dominated by a wing that isn't conservative but radical and it's a problem in the process level and it's a problem at the congressional nominating process level. it's a problem with the primary as we go ahead and it has a great relevance whether we are going to deal to find some of that common ground that we have been talking about.
12:41 pm
democrats needed a net of 25 seats to capture the narrow majority. looks like they would probably win 25 or more republican seats. but you have to take into account whether you would lose any of your own and they lost a number of their own. there were a couple of surprise victories on their part of moderates who we did not expect would prevail. john in georgia was redistricting for the second consecutive time the would be absolute loser for him that he prevailed and not just by a handful of votes and a template how you can run as a democrat and a conservative area and a smart guy. jim matheson in utah in the seat where an enormous amount of money went and i was out in utah and bombed into georgia the airport and he had been doing and he sent and an african-american young conservative mormon republican. now that is a mouthful, and an
12:42 pm
immigrant, and an attractive candidate but he knew how to run in the district and prevailed so there are opportunities for moderate democrats but the numbers are down from what they were in 2010 and they are down now as well. on the republican side the other factor was other losses would have occurred. democrats captured a majority of the votes for congress statewide this tells you something about the power of redistricting. the work on both sides but republicans build a fire wall that worked very well for many of their potentially vulnerable freshmen and other members and built in some advantages. the relevance of the democratic gain in the senate for
12:43 pm
significant because with 55, what should be and will be in another enormous republican advantage in 2014, 20 democratic seats up to only 13 republican, and here again the republican seats on the surface look very safe, they are in states where it is unlikely that you could see losses but you could see once again a few of those occasions were victory is denied because of the nomination struggles. if you are within one, two or three then you can pretty much count on a majority and it changes how you behave in the next two years. if you need five or six now it would be six the becomes a different matter and it makes it harder and it may mean that the willingness of some in the senate compromise is now rather
12:44 pm
than believing that you are going to be in a much stronger position in 2015 will be greater but there is another factor to keep in mind for 2014. among those that are up in 2014, mitch mcconnell, john cornyn, lindsey graham, saxby chambliss if we were sitting here four years ago we would have unanimity that he was the king of the republican party in kentucky and there wasn't even a contest for who was the elder li acknowledged leader, then we get to the 2010 elections and he put every resource that he could come every attempt come every string he could pull to keep rand paul from running and winning miserably. if you look at this from mccaul's perspectives note that several of the republicans that ran for the senate this time wouldn't promise going in that they would support mitch
12:45 pm
mcconnell. and you know that you have the potential for a primary challenge in a party that you no longer control. your willingness to compromise on some of these critical issues may be itself compromised. if you are john cornyn, you would have stayed out of the race for the republican nomination for the senate this time around but you sat back and watched as the conservative and powerful lieutenant governor, the most powerful together in the state, was beaten from one end of the stick to the other in the primary by ted cruce because he was a moderate. and you have got to be thinking that could happen to me. and if you are lindsey graham, you go and knowing that you are the number one, number two, number three targets for growth and it's already said they will do what ever it takes to defeat you in a majority of local republican committees and softer line than basically declared
12:46 pm
that you are a socialist. so, one of the absolute model problem solvers has to think a little bit about whether he will fall on grenades right now and if you are saxby chambliss, one of the courageous members in the gang of six, now a gang of eight who put themselves on the line for a budget deal it's not a place you can expect a primary either. keep in mind the number one and number two leaders will be mitch mcconnell and john cornyn. now, with all that, we have some interesting messages from the republican leaders on the election on the day that followed. john boehner said, as michael noted, we have got as much of a mandate as he does. but then softened at the next day by saying we want to work with the president and we know we need a budget deal and revenue from that budget deal. mitch mcconnell on the other hand, despite suffering a
12:47 pm
significant loss for his party in the senate was pugnacious and said there is no mandate for the field policies of the president and cooperation -- jeter come to us and understand that if it doesn't pass through the house, it is a dead letter. you might take from that that you have opportunities in the house and nothing from the senate but the opposite is true. the fact is whether she believes it or not or was saying it for effect right now. the senate as a group of problem solvers who've been waiting to bust out after this election and we've already seen it in the two months leading up to november 6th with the gang of eight and now what is a gain of 40. 40 senators got 20 from each party working with some simpson bowles and now a absent
12:48 pm
community without the b-2 for example now engaged to try to come up with a resolution of the fiscal cliff but also one that takes us further towards a sizable additional down payment on the larger debt problem and will fit the templates of simpson bowles, rivlin domenici and the gang of six which means a total of $4 trillion. it's going to be a complete. there is no plan and there's never been a plan, just guide lines. but one to 1.3 trillion coming from revenue along with commitment to serious restraint on all of the entitlement programs including social security, medicare and medicaid and retreat and defense on domestic programs not done through sequesters. probably the guide lines and borders to the relevant committees in congress, no super committee created to come up with specific plans and the revenues in the attack reform
12:49 pm
plan. that may be watch in which mcconnell does not participate or maybe one in which he votes against in 2014. but i do not think this time he can do what he did so masterfully for four years which is to get everybody in unison voting against things and voting for filibusters on everything. and a group of people that will include lamar alexander and bob corker and saxby chambliss and mike crapo and tom coburn and lisa murkowski and susan collins and a number of others are going to be moving somewhat in a different direction. the house, however if you parse his words a little bit further it was we know there has to be more revenue and we can get them through more tax cuts. it was cut the rates and other revenue will come. there was no commitment to something more than that, and you had 90% or more of the house
12:50 pm
republicans who continued to stand by the grover norquist pledge. that takes that kind of plan emerging problematic and the question becomes will they get a plan together and get those senators could probably pass the senate with 65 or 70 votes and which i believe with immediately endorsed by obama to even bring it up for a vote in the house we are bringing it up for a vote means almost certainly it will have to if it passes come with more democrats supporting it and republicans to the means mitch mcconnell, john boehner falling on a grenade. you could do that but when you have eric cantor and mccarthy eager to reach under your belly and in the -- pulled the pan it makes it a little bit harder because you are not going to have a unified leadership to support this and will be very interesting dynamic. what struck me the most of the statements in the related vein is what barack obama said
12:51 pm
extraordinarily high i thought to be allowed to sit with mitt romney to see how he can work together to find that common ground. my guess is that romney did not receive that statement with great enthusiasm and eagerness. he was going through his own period of mourning but having run a campaign in the last month that was built around the idea i will find that common ground, i can reach that common ground obama calls himeno says we need this. we are about to go off the fiscal cliff will you help me build support for this deal that will have the support of the business community and a super majority in the senate, the bipartisan way that would be an interesting phenomena to be at the same time, we had an announcement today by simpson bowles bolstered by something like $25 billion in the million dollars in business support for going aggressively on the road to promote this kind of plan.
12:52 pm
my guess is one of the first calls obama will make to his old friend tom coburn and imagine the power in december if it happened as a meeting at the white house with tom colburn on one side, simpson bowles behind you probably not mitt romney but possibly come and jamie dimond and a few other business leaders saying we've heard of the american people's pleased to finally get together and solve these problems. you saw what we did what hurricane sandy. we can do this with the hurricane in the fiscal cliff coming if only we can get it up to a vote in the house. that may not happen and it may be that they cannot reach a deal on this plan because there is no procedural way to get a vote that would guarantee a few months down the road that you would actually need those targets. frankly finding a tax reform plan that raises a trillion dollars in revenue is far
12:53 pm
trickier than the 1986 tax reform that cut rates, broaden the base and eliminate the deduction but was revenue neutral, i was tough enough. but if they can manage to find that we may see that dynamic emerge let me make two other quick points. he was a loser and a winner on tuesday night. a winner because he won his house seat, a loser for the obvious reason but also for a couple of additional ones. it's kind of embarrassing when you are put on the ticket and you can't carry your own state. but also his percentage in his district went down significantly. at the same time, there was no question that paul ryan, who was a national figure but far more recognized by those of us in the intellectual world and the common period and by others he could have walked through any airport outside of wisconsin in america and might well have gone
12:54 pm
unnoticed by one or two people. now obviously he is a significant national figure and clearly one in the mix for 2016. but he is in the mix for that kind of conservative community that is dominated let primary caucus process before. going along with these compromises that include tax increases as part of a package becomes a little tricky for him and also becomes tricky for john boehner because now you have with the young guns one of them is an even more than the enormous national figure. finally, let me say the next few weeks are not just about the fiscal cliff. we have a farm bill waiting for action. a farm bill that passed with 74 votes and this is an interesting template as we talk about the fiscal cliff. in the senate model of bipartisanship even in the midst of the greatest drought since the great depression, the house didn't act.
12:55 pm
whether they can act now you have an agricultural committee chaired desperate to bring up the bill and had bipartisan support, a leadership that felt it would have a conservative revolt if it brought it up is still hanging and then you have a cybersecurity bill. this was a bill that emerged in the senate with susan collins and joe lieberman who are extremely close and another bipartisan action blocked by lieberman's closest friends in the senate other than susan collins, john mccain and lindsey graham and it caused enormous tension. will they find a way out of that and what will be the last horrah in the senate and what is important and one could argue because we know there are people all over the world working night and day to bring about a sires security terrorist attack and they are in the government as well as outside and also knowing
12:56 pm
if there is no action there will be steps taken by the executive fiat that would be even more obnoxious. can we overcome that this function in the next few weeks? very interesting and then a final comment and i do believe that there is a fertile ground for an immigration bill contrary to what a lot of people might say for precisely the reasons that henry has been talking about there will be a struggle in the future of the republican party and on one side you are going to have people like jeb bush and lindsey graham and mitch daniels who say this is crazy if we don't start to reach out in a different way and move this issue of immigration off of the agenda we are in terrible shape and there are going to be republicans where obama can reach out and find some of that common ground but he's going to have problems with his own base and that is what also happens with the second term president. they will have everything they
12:57 pm
want because you are not shackled by the need to run for reelection and goes in exactly the opposite direction. so that is another challenge that obama has not just winning over republicans in the house, but also fending off your own strongest supporters. >> we have covered a lot of ground and i assure you have many questions. there will be assistance wandering around with microphones if you can identify yourself and i want to thank you the assistance, jennifer that prepared this handout in the 2014 senate races and andrew that worked on the monthly political report. i think that this is information that you will find anywhere else in washington from the exit poll results. we will start here in the front and please identify yourself. >> i am the congressional correspondent for the hispanic outlook magazine.
12:58 pm
if i wonder if we will see as we did in 2008 the difference between the exit polls and the voting count and when you think that will happen. in 2008 they showed the latino votes made 9% of the total electorate but the actual number was 7.4%. and my big question is 9 percent or 7% of what? if you just -- it looks like the total number of voters are going to be less this year than in 2008. so i am wondering when does that come out, and another little thing i have to say come immigration isn't just about latinos, and i think republicans have a great chance to talk about immigration as the growing
12:59 pm
immigrant community and also the fact the immigration bill that would pass first is a permanent green card for the students that study it. michael? >> the exit poll consortium massages the data that initially comes in and we noticed with the exit poll both because of interview bias but also responded that it tends to attract more democrats and the 2008 democratic primary attract more obama voters in hillary clinton voters. learning is a cumulative for the people that work on this every two and four years have learned something i was working with in the michigan in the head of the fox decision desk and they were over in rockefeller center spending about four hours in the
1:00 pm
afternoon basically. they got the data adjusted for the response and down to a 49-49 top line that is an 1% of the vote for each candidate and unlike the past years in 2000 for some of the state exit polls were not way out of whack with what the report turned out to be. in fact they turned out to be pretty close. .. if you take that as an
1:01 pm
impression nistic thing. the hispanic number did go up to 10% this time, i think. we'll see. there's the category when they ask race, they have the group called other. there's 7% in other. they are probably people of latin american origin whose race category are different than our own. immigration, what norm said is right. if the democrats and the people that sought the '06, '07 legislation have a limited degree of legalization or if you want to call it that amnesty. i think there's a path to a comprise legislation. >> we have three questions rights here. i'm going start with this gentleman. if you can tell us your question and the gentleman right here and we'll try to answer them this way. we'll cluster the questions together. was there another question? you have a question right here. these two people right here. it you could tell us what your questions are, go ahead. >> i'm speaking on behalf of an
1:02 pm
endangered pee cease -- species, the old northeast -- sorry. northeast suburban philadelphia. you don't see many much them anymore. i have watched my dad write countless checks to the republican party, and i spoke with him last night and he said why should i write check to the republican party when the demographic issue has been going on and he cited the book from the '70s and he said, listen, you know, this is been on the horizon forever, and now in 2012 the republican party is waking up to it? my question is where has the republican party not the hill but party leadership been on the issue and also is there any hope for the northeast republicans.
1:03 pm
>> the gentleman, if you could tell us your question and this gentleman right here. patrick, in the back. >> sure, i wonder if any of you might comment open the outcome of the election a at level of inside of us weighed more which is in the governorship and the state legislature. one of the things that people don't see is that in the constitution, the only people that actually have the constitutional ability to supervisor washington are state legislature if they decide to propose amendment to the constitution. what happened at the state level, how does it impact what happened in washington. >> we'll take the third question, the gentleman back here. >> yes. the pakistan -- my question about the republican party. last week i was at the to make calls and i saw -- [inaudible] and -- [inaudible] and i began that might have
1:04 pm
deport mohammad. that's my first name. miest steamed group of -- [inaudible] mitt romney is wonderful think most included person. he [inaudible] about, you know, i have em pa think for these people deportation of latino. obama didn't raise $16 million people -- my question is the republican going lose a long-term by making dependenting just on the segment of the population? thank you. >> i should point out that ben is here the author of the 1970 book, "the real majority." [applause] >> let me take a crack that deals with in part with the first two questions. there are going to be modest shift democrats will pick up a
1:05 pm
few. i think there's a larger point to be made here. some relates to money and what is happening in the post citizens united world. the real impact is not the presidential level. the super pac money didn't change much. presidential candidates have plenty of recognition and plenty of roars on their own. you move further down and you see the impact. at the state level, we had a few million dollar that went in to primary election that was targeted at knocking off the moderate republicans and succeeded. we have the coke brothers this time that were deeply involved in kansas too and the same thing in arkansas and had the same effect. we seen it before in north carolina. and, you know, when you look at that, one of the things that is happening is the state legislative chambers are becoming actually more radicalized than what we see at the national level, and it has an impact. and i think, for example, you know, if you look at the comments on rape by todd akin
1:06 pm
and richard murdoch, they resonated. there were other things as well. in virginia, the obama people went in with a campaign to win over more women that was based far more on the invasive ultrasound initiative that really resonated with a lot of people and you're going see action that may make the message coming the more pragmatic leader of the party at the national level a little bit less resonate. it's going to be a real challenge for them as they move ahead. and, you know, just a quick comment on asian vote, which a lot of people thought was going to break for more are the republicans. which is just like this perennial notion that the jewish vote is just waiting to move other to the republican side and sheldon spent many, many millions of dollars based on that premise, and it's going
1:07 pm
come out probably almost exactly where it's been for the last ten election. and the asian vote from the exit polls is not far off from where it was in 2008, and i think it's in part for just the reason that mohammad suggested, that even if you have a lot of educate asians, some who have been denied visa, other who come over with high education and being forced to go back and other places. they don't see themselves as different from his pan -- hispanic on the issue. it's a same larger sense of you don't want people like me here. if you can't change that message in the way that henry was suggesting, you have a bigger problem. that's a growing share of the electoral. >> last the question, i don't want to use, and i think the republican party should banish the notion of reaching out, i think reaching out says we're starting from a position of our own idea and we're going bring
1:08 pm
them to you. what we need to do is talk about inclusion. and the first step of inclusion is listening. and listening to your aspirations, your values, and frankly, you don't like about us. and figuring out where we have common ground. one thing i want to survey of asian immigrants to america, or asians generally points out that over half of them do not belong to any sort of christian religion. so if you start your political statement as an e candidate jew day owe christian -- you already tell off of the asians you're not part of the her heritage. >> little things like that that republicans need to think about. start with listening and not assuming, and not assuming that you not only -- you're correct but also that the person will whom you're trying to talk with
1:09 pm
is somebody who automatically understand you. >> michael, quickly on northeastern moderate. >>well, you know, some people yearn for the days of nelson rockefeller. those days are gone. you know, but at the same time pennsylvania house delegation i believe is going to be 13th with the creative redistricting districting both in the last cycle and this one is going to be 13 and 5. republicans. so that says that republicans are by no means extinct in some part of the northeast. you have a combination in new york and new jersey of gentry liberals, immigrants and so forth, large black populations that tilt those domestic district domestic. the, you know, those old professional areas, the high income voters. mitt romney did do better than john mccain or previous republican candidates with high-income voters. i think there's a been a democratic trend from 1992
1:10 pm
through 2008 in the suburbs, pennsylvania, 61% for the first george bush in '88 was 57% for barack obama. i haven't drilled down to the county data. i'm expecting to see some at least modest gains for romney in the areas ab and, you know, you'll see. the point of the republican party, you know, the republican party faces some challenges which we have been speaking to so does the democratic party. white catholics voted 59-35 for mitt romney. that's a group that voted on richard nixon voted 22% and 78% for nixon. the party compete for different kind of voters. and the score was 50-48 in president and something like this republican for the white house. i think the republicans face challenges but not doom. >> take three questions from this side of the room. starting with wane, the former
1:11 pm
colleague at aei. >> wane. richard nixon white house alumnis. henry why ynt do you let us know a couple of potential republican leaders who could give the speech honestly and sincerely. my other question, did the early votes in states like virginia, florida and so on lead to a big obama edge to help put him other the top. the early voting? >> a question right here. and then in the far back. what i can hear is the republican party is a party of people that like to keep their wealthy and white nails. as you said the -- male that is not expanding the only possibility is voter suppression. [laughter] at the very back.
1:12 pm
john greene, norm, and anyone else, but since you addressed this specifically around senate relationships and that, so harry reid said before the election that if romney won, they would not be able to work together and then after the election he said the republicans, a i need you guys to along the lines as you were saying with the bust out group. now he's talking about going nuclear and taking away the filibuster. and to me that suggests that we get deadlock if we gridlock if we go there. >> chris christie, jeb bush, mitch daniel, condoleezza rice, i hope paul ryan, a number of people whose names we haven't
1:13 pm
heard of yet but perhaps rubio, scott walker, i think there are many, many, many, can i say many more republicans at all state stages and walks of life from the highest office to the lowest volunteer who believe that and who will start to speak in those terms and in those language because it's why they're in the republican party. it's why they want to run for office, and they want to stop being characteristicture as something they're note not. >> early voting. there was signs that early voting was not produce as i big of democratic edge in 2012 as it did in '08. i think that will turn out to be true. it did provide a sufficient votes for democrats in florida, virginia, and ohio. so, you know, the signs were
1:14 pm
they did pretty well if not as well as twaict and then did well enough. >> just on the one brief comment on the early voting karl rove whose analysis was not distinguished this time either. [laughter] also i've got kind bemewsessed when he said the early voting isn't going to work. they have a massive effort to get the early votes in part of ohio where there's been the war on coal and those republicans who are going to come forward. i thought what he's saying is axelrod are more ons. he's getting anybody who says they were a democrat out to the polls. they really targeting individuals in an extraordinarily successful way. you don't need to look at the overnumber numbers. it's who they were turning out. they did it in a fashion that would be enhanced in the future in part because of efforts to block votes on election day, to
1:15 pm
clog up the lines at the polls, and the kinds of things we saw in florida especially. those voting wars are going to be accelerated as we look to the future. john, on the filibuster, you're right, you have a more liberal contentious of democrats coming in with the election. all of them have signed on to significant filibuster reform and reid who did the d not want a year ago endorsed it more recently and i don't think they can move forward without doing something on the filibuster. the question is two-fold. one is when. if you move on it now, you poison the well in terms of a fiscal cliff broad bipartisan comprise. that maybe different if you wait until january. and you could potentially do it by reaching out and finding some republicans support for more modest changes. karl eleven, for example, has come up with a proposal that
1:16 pm
much more modest than many of the democrats want. and mostly focusing on the motion to proceed. but could include a couple of other areas you might find a bipartisanship buy in that would take the issue at least take the temperature down. if that doesn't happen, then the senate next year becomes a more unruly and more partisan place, and that, i think, is entirely possible and would make governing in the next couple of years more of a challenge. >> i want to ask norm about the house versus senate. you have all the gangs in the senate on the moderate side. is there any chance for a moderate house gang to form itself at some point. they tried over the years, as you know, and i think matt doubt
1:17 pm
or somebody mentioned he's trying to organize something. can you comment on any sort of moderate organization to help boehner in the house? >> he mentioned earlier the couple of moderates that got elected -- the number of what were there 44 blue dogs and rahm emmanuel did proportly moderate democrats and elected in 2006 and 2008. they were almost all gone. the rules of the house tend to give control to the leadership of the majority party as long as it has sufficient majority and cohesiveness within the caucus or conference. and i think, you know, some substantive issues as norm suggest there had could be problems. i'm not sure boehner committed himself as strongly as dennis he
1:18 pm
won't bring anything forward that not supported by the majority party. he hasn't broughten anything forward like that. there aren't moderate republicans, there are some republicans open to some of the idea. but the northeast republicans might -- rand from the senate and unfortunate result for himself and the republican party in the primary. >> and that's right. i think the problem for boehner who is legislator would cienld of like the find the resolution is he doesn't have a leadership that behind him on that. there is a group the center aisle caucus which had a significant and robust membership. there -- none. zero. but there are plenty of conservative problem solvers. the problem that they have is almost all of them have been told by the club for growth we have $3 million boundary on your
1:19 pm
head if you lift them out of the fox hole. it becomes a serious challenge. you get back to some of these larger problems. and it's a question whether there's any way to free them up a little bit to move in a different direction. you know, for many i would say if you look at, for example, the house appropriations committee in the past has been a model bipartisan working together but you get these bills where there would be give and take and everybody get a little something and bring them to the floor and have enormous support, and the republicans vote against the own bill. because that was -- you were operating in a unified way. it's a a parking lot parliament process. you have twenty or twenty five models and people like colin peterson as well as the fewer remaining southerners but you have some from the west coast as
1:20 pm
well who have voting records that are more moderate. a couple of business people from the northeast for nancy pelosi to keep her partying to together she has to find ways to bring them in to the fold and you see a few more at least opportunities to comprise. but the fact is that the caucus are moving further apart as there's a need to pull them together. it's not clear they have the -- >> after the president's health care bill passed, people who voted against it were primary challenge and larry kiss l to beat his primary challenge he lost election against the guy who is the head of the blue dogs to represent steve -- [inaudible] allen boyd. yeah allen boyd was primary challenge and he lost the
1:21 pm
election. this time around the pennsylvania legislature, you know, the state for the respect they put tim holden who has been blue dog since 1992 in a democratic district. the first thing that propped up is progressive primary challenge. they took him out because he voted the health care plan of the president. i was watching -- beat david due herself. the people at norm cited who survived people voted against the health care bill of the president and the question would would be if john hadn't been redistricted would he had have, preprimary. it's both party bases that are moving their party to the sides of the aisle that they're on. >> i think some of the republicans, you know, norm says they become radicalized, i think what they would argue is that state legislature and governors and states like california and
1:22 pm
illinois and new york and to some extent the congress including times republicans have been majorities there, are radical and overspending and sending us over a, you know, on to the road to greece by constantly increasing government as a share of gdp which it's at the higher rate than it was before. i don't think they are crazy irrational or whatever, if they're views that racial people can hold and they would argue that the appropriations process, which is norm pointed out was bipartisan and gingrich when he became speaker tried to undermine that with less complete success. has tended to produce spending that puts on a trajectory toward trillion dollar deficit a year. that's the thing we argue about in politics. and some people don't agree with you know what other people think. >> and we have two questions here and back here.
1:23 pm
>> thanks. i'm [inaudible] and i write the mitch report. i want to put this in the -- i want to put the question in a framework that begins with a dmeant i think -- i think michael made at the outset if i'm misquoting or interpreting start there michaeling with in certain ways the election was big government versus small government perspectives on governance in this country. and then listening to henry's observation about the exit poll, and the overwhelming number the 80/20 number cares about people like me. if the issues that define big government versus small government come down to things like obamacare or tax rates returning to earlier race on
1:24 pm
high net worth individuals or dodd-frank, is the argument, is the way to talk about those issues big government versus small government or talk about it in terms of fairness and equity. and doesn't the exit poll suggest that that's ultimately how the population cease those issues and -- sees those issues and i would tag on to that that the only people i hear talking about which this is an election between those people and big government and small government are republicans who want the world to think that democrats are all about they want big government. i don't hear comings talking about the fact they want big government. it seems to me we want effective government, and i just throw in the tagline that if you believe as many do, that sandy was a
1:25 pm
kicker for barack obama in the closing day of the election and had something to do in the poll 47-47 to 50-47 it seems to me that says that arguing the big government versus small government is wasted rhetoric and what we want is government that is effective, number one. and number two, we want government to do those things that are, you know, demonstrate a sense of care about people like me. >> this question -- [inaudible] just as a footnote while he's taking the mic. fewer than half said obama's hurricane response was an important factor in the vote and 54% said it wasn't important factor. 42 is a big number. >> hi.
1:26 pm
what dow think that president obama is how much is president obama willing to accept if something like -- in the program they call for about 70% cuts and 30% revenue increases. he campaigned against romney by saying you're going lose this, you're going lose that to all kinds of group. he never opened his mouth suggesting he was willing to cut nist. he never talked about how the deficit was important. so now that he's been re-elected, how much is he willing to accept some kind of program like that which would cause instead of 100% cuts 70% cuts in many things? >> well, he frames the issue, he who frames the issue tends determine the outcome of the issue. republicans frame it as big or small government. democrats came it as caring and, you know, fairness and so
1:27 pm
forth. you try to frame and issue. and, you know, you could argue that either framing sets the issue. federal government spending 24 or 25% of dd p during the first obama administration against the norm and the post world world war ii days. that sounds like bigger government to me. there's various arguments. i brought -- preparing a book and i'm working on for aei on the second clinton term and the budget agreement which did not include a tax rate increase. in fact, include tiond a capital gains tax cut in 1997 and the work that clinton and gingrich embarked on to think seriously about entitlement reform. these things can be done and one of the things that got the budget balanced, part of it was the clinton tax increases in '93 supported by democrats only part of was getting ready of the savings and loan crisis.
1:28 pm
part of is greater economic growth. when you have it revenue starts poring in it. it seems to me as a nonexport it starts pouring in at are a rates most projections don't project. and, you know, that's up with of the ways that you grow revenues in the government is, you know, simply sufficient fused with money. california's progressive income tax can bring in huge revenue. they think they lost $2 billion because the facebook ipo didn't go as well as they expected. but because they have a progressive state tax system, but, you know, the temp thaition is to spend all the money and then gate government baseline budget that you can't pay for when times are not as well. growth produces revenue. >> yeah. just, you know, if you discuss this argument at the abstract level, it has more traction if you talk about reducing government. it's when you get down to concrete level.
1:29 pm
that's why you, the romney budget or the paul ryan budget get in to specific. they cut discretionary spending by 20% overall we're not going tell you what the specifics are. if you do you get in had to cuts in food safety and meat inspection, cuts in small airports because you have to cut out the faa in health research, fema and homeland security. that's where the money is. big bird doesn't help much on the front. and i think that's part of the argument we have ahead. obama very specifically said he wanted deal that would have $1 in revenue increases for every 2.50 in budget cuts. we're talking about a 3 30-70 ratio being there. he endorsed the gang of six plan the coburn and durbin, et al.
1:30 pm
plan and made it clear that he understands that accepting especially cut backs in medicare and medicated in the -- medicaid in the future group as a part overall deal has to be done if you can do the other side of the coin. my guess is and i'm confident on it that if simpson and bowels and coburn and chambliss and durbin and conrad and ben -- bennett all agree on a deal obama will endorse it immediately. >> i'm a small government question. smaller government has been a core republican principle for a number of decades. it was not something invented by the conservative movement. it was something that dwight eisenhower talked about. it's not something that is going
1:31 pm
go away nor should it go away. but i do think that a couple of things. one, is that when you talk about caring about people like you. you have to listen. that's what i was saying to a friend from pakistan. some of the things that republicans can do to address the question don't involve the size of government. e in the term of the monetary sense. secondly, i would like to -- it's two things ronald reagan said in his speech. when he gave the famous speech for barry gold water. ronald reagan ebb -- endorsed an expansion of health insurance for senior citizens. what he said was he favored smaller plan to help people who are poorer off ran creating a one size fits all government plan. that's reagan endorsing barry goldwater in 1964, what he said at the end of the speech was that he didn't believe there was such a thing as left or right.
1:32 pm
there was only up or down. all too often conservative have fallen in to the left versus right. reagan himself did not like to use. in 1976, the republican party was faced with extinction. the -- and reagan went in to c pack which could have been held in an audience room smaller than this in 1988 and gave a speech called a new republican party that he basically outlined how he was going win in four years. one of the things he did in that speech was talk about when you talk about your programs, you talk about what you want to do. talk about how it will work. don't talk about it in terms of ideology. ronald reagan in 1977 at the depth much the nadir of the
1:33 pm
republican party basically saying how to create a phoenix-like rebirth. it's time we listen to ronald reagan. >> we have three questions here and then here and here and let ben, our colleague have the last word. i also want to note there are a few people who started with us in election watch in 1982, i don't know if you want to raise your hands. anyway, we're grateful you would stay with us for that long. >> thank you elizabeth sinclair long and forecaster real estate. with respect to norm and dick morris and carl rove don't need my defenses. i know, it's easy to make fun of people when they lost, but morris and rove disting withish themselves in other ways. as someone thought that mitt romney would win big time, now taking lot of flak from all my liberal friends and family, i just like to ask michael barone
1:34 pm
where weather -- whether he can share some of the his reasons why he thought this brilliant man thought that romney would win handedly with excuses to charles. because he didn't that adverb. >> the panel comment on what effect it's going have on the supreme court appointment that probably come up in the next four years. >> yes, frank, the economy might recovery. if the recovery isn't complete or if growth is tepid and slow and jobs don't come back i by the next presidential campaign. will how will that affect the types of policies that candidates would propose in the reacceptivity, in other words different solutions and how
1:35 pm
people might change electorally. >> i think that given polling data, given the uncertainty of it these days. i think there were a lot of reasonable predictions you could have made from getting barack obama up to 332 would have been a reasonable prediction. it appears to have come true. getting over 300 for romney was within the realm of possibility. there's a lot of issues in polling now that are that karlyn has been following closely for aei and troubling to serious pollsters. polling procedures were developed in a nation that universal landline telephone in a population that answered the phone. we do not live in such a nation anymore. pugh research found calls
1:36 pm
initiated resulted in a 1997 it was 36%. is that 9% representative of the larger public? we're not sure. the exit poll intake is not as typical not been represented for the general public which is a different kind of poll. there are questions to be asked here and things to be learned further. so, you know, it's, you know, on predictions it's, you know, there a lot of -- i think there's a lot of predictions out there. they basically are where the eight target states going if they gone differently, you would seen a different result. and the electoral college, as i said, what looks like a landslide in the electoral college is not a landslide in popular votes. barack obama got 53% of the vote and 365 electoral votes. i think it's regarded as a solid win, usually. not a landslide.
1:37 pm
you get a landslide of electoral votes usually when you do that. >> as somebody -- i don't begrudge anything that michael or dick morris said about any election, anybody who does this they need to how bleeping hard it is to do. i would agree with michael anything between the range he talked about was entirely reasonable and consistent with the data before us. as a partisan, i sat down -- i'm an analyst and a partisan. an analyst when i write and a partisan's heart. and when i sat down on sunday to write my piece, i went -- i took hours to put the data together. i wrote it, when i concluded to myself what i had to write. i couldn't write for an hour. i was sick. one thing i would like to say about our friends on the right, when i did publish it, the comment on the national view
1:38 pm
basically say that i should be out of the conservative group. one person accused me of peddling fear -- i a more favorable reaction than national review. i think what that -- [inaudible] [laughter] yeah. [inaudible] many obscene comments as i did? no. from either group. [inaudible] from the left commentators, a lot of comments. >> no. oh no. look. there's hyper partisanship on the left and hyper partisanship on the right. what i did get was -- i sounded reasonable how could i work at the hacks at aei and the bow disco at nro? okay. [laughter] what we need to do in general in our discussion with each other is to recognize that everyone in this discussion is american.
1:39 pm
everyone in the discussion is actually not a hack or bo bozo in the making. but something trying to argue and think the way through the problems that are difficult and complex. somebody said they were going to be a pundit and promised that barack obama is going to win at% of the vote with 49 states. that person person is probably not realm of reality. that's not anybody who was serious was. it was the hardest election in our lifetime the hardest election since nixon in '68 to call. >> i just can't resist saying they put michael in a different category than dick morris. [laughter] that aside, on the supreme court, we don't know what vacancy will be. we have several justices in their ownership 70s, you know, in the world today being in your 70s does not mean
1:40 pm
you're approaching the end of your life. we had justices with health problem. we have justices who smoke too much and may be other vices that could have an impact. but, you know, act yourial table don't help us. there's a good chance there will be three vacancy. some of the depends on when the vacancy emerge. if you have a 55-45 democratic center barack obama has a little bit more leeway to pick somebody with a stronger ideological edge than if it's a 51-49 senate or even a senate that goes the other way. but i think you're more likely in any event to get somebody who would be somewhere in the broad center of the legal discourse, and there are a lot of options out there.
1:41 pm
in many ways, more interesting is the impact that we'll see with obama having four years and maybe a little bit more of an understanding curious he didn't have it as a constitutional law professor of the importance of putting forward nominee for appeals courts and district court. he was slow in moving through that in the first couple of years and there a lot of vacancy there. he has opportunity to fill the vai captain sei and the controversial other the filibuster may end up being more yet again in a replay of the bush years over judicial nominations than it comes over executive branch nominations. >> another question of the stagnant economy. in in a few years, i think obama neutralized romney on the economy this year if it goes -- [inaudible] it's hard to know. i think it's interesting 53% of the voters blame george bush for the economic problems. you can see how he neutralized.
1:42 pm
>> a comment on that. if you look at the most recent analysis of -- who were off the charts great in doing straightforward analysis. looking a the downturn in the context of other downturns triggered by financial crises and debt problems, which very different from a typical recession. we come out better than most others and we have clearly come out of it better than other countries that experience it in a global way. if you look at the forecast made by an lettic and others, basically it was regardless of who is the president, we'll see 12 million jobs created over the next four years. now they may be right and they may be wrong. their prognostication on economic issues are nowhere better than ours have been on political issues and lots of things can emerge including war,
1:43 pm
a -- other kinds of economic issues, trade wars, whatever it may be. there's a pretty good chance that we're going start to see some significant recovery and incipient signs out there. one part is another area i think the obama policy haltered not moving rapidly on the housing market. people, you know, american savings have been wrapped up in their homes, and you're not going get consumption or confidence if you're save sings not only taken a hit it's not going to come back. as you see home prices rise and the market shift, that will probably itself a significant additional level of consume every confidence and that could feed on some level of growth. but to be realistic we're not going get the level of growth 4% or 5% in the next couple of years that emerge if you have are recover fry a recession. it's going take longer than that. it's probably going to be at lower level. >> ben, you can have the last
1:44 pm
word, this question. >> bloomberg with the -- council for policy and ethics. i was wondering what the deep division within the nation we have seen, the sneer split that is there, the division between those people who are religious families, family that made up without two-parent families. the deep divisions. the culture wars that have been spoke on so frequently what about a healing or a unified omni culture as you spoken about , mr. olsen with which is the allen grace returning to congress not only the right side as the spectrum. as things would be there more oirn seen and as you're out there, as you are constantly looking at churl ash cultural effect and effort what happens within the national cull culture
1:45 pm
will it be a time of healing or further division. >> okay go here in the front. okay. hi, i walked in just after karlyn was talking about . >> can you speak up? >> what? >> can you speak up. >> i said i walked in just as you were finishing your remarks on dick and i wanted to -- [inaudible] [inaudible] constitutional diamond -- institutional diamond. >> could you repeat that? >> what about norm? ben, hold the -- >> norm is an constitutional diamond in the rough. [laughter] dick used to say that the
1:46 pm
closeness of the half and half 149 and that -- [inaudible] winner take all situation, winner in the take all situation can be tilted by the tiniest group of voters. after all you only vote to -- [inaudible] to say who is the dpdzing. he said the -- that was his -- [inaudible] winner take all has a lot of --
1:47 pm
[inaudible] that god gave arabs the oil and jews the electoral college -- [laughter] that they were clustered in swing states in florida, -- norm, you can respond to the diamond in the rough. >> so if protects all minorities because it makes them particularly in a close state enormous prizes. [inaudible] on the surface to get an idea, i've had the -- the idea that who is going to be the leader of this country and be a tie and so many tens of millions of people are really disenfranchised because they live in a blue state or a red state. my thought was and i think it is just the -- and if you award it the federal statute or
1:48 pm
constitutional -- unelectoral vote to the winner of the popular vote that would e -- eliminate a tie and make everybody feel that if they wanted to feel that way. it would make everyone feel they were part of the process. even if they live in 70-30 swing state red or blue. i went in and voted -- [inaudible] talk about the issues. >> yeah. you know, a couple of points that ben made. first, it's a rare election that isn't decided in some fashion at the margin. and yet does result in an electoral college bonus. ronald reagan got 51% of the popular votes and won an enormous surplus of elector yat votes. democratted try to make the case when the republicans swept senate shift a shift of 50,000
1:49 pm
would have given democrats back seven senate seats and, you know, so what? because basically you have a tide and it moves in one distribution and it adults thing in one particular way. that's going the case and it's going to be the case that people who lose will find some rational for why they didn't lose or why it doesn't mean so much. the electoral college has some serious challenges now. we can thank god at one level that we didn't end up with another 2,000 which we easily could have had. where you had the winner of the popular vote lose the electoral college. it would have been flipped this time around. i was at one level deliciously awaiting the "the wall street journal" editorial that said grow up. it's the rules. this is how it happens saying go to the barricades! but and it would be flipped around the other way around. it's a kind of crisis that is now in the making. and it is a problem as ben
1:50 pm
said. that we have 41 states where basically the outcome is determined. the good news for the people you adopt have to sit back like a goose being force fed and have commercials that just are the dell luge upon you. i don't know how saw the video of 22 consecutive video in ohio that somebody put together. it's a problem we need to deal with. one way is to provide an electoral college bonus for the vote winner and preserve some of the feature of the college we don't need to talk about in detail. but that we have long supported in view as valuable and just one other point which is keep in mind if you talk about the national popular vote and how wonderful it would be and we could avoid some of the nightmares imagine an election like 1960. popular vote nationwide is divide by one tenth of 1%.
1:51 pm
you don't impound just the ballot boxes in florida. you impound them across the nation. you have an army of lawyers going to florida, you have maybe it would be the biggest job program in the history of the country going everywhere and taking months to decide. it's not so great. and just one -- you know, one of the great problems is the culture more generally. and i think it's reflected in the allen graces and allen west and others. and you have them across the board. and it is, you know, we live in a culture now where lying makes no sense of shame or cost. you get caught in a lie and the lesson you learn these days you double down on it and you get your own cable television show or become a political superstar. and it is something we really have to deal with, i think, in a larger level. and i actually think what henry has been talking about, we need a vibrant conservative republican party. we need two parties that duoat
1:52 pm
each other but also recognize fact is most of the issues there's an enormous amount of common ground. these are not black and white questions. but it's got to be done at the different level and got to be done with a different set of attitudes and i think he has csh and there are others steve hayward who was here for a long time wrote an interesting piece on the future of the conservative movement. we're not talking about northeastern liberals who have no home. i don't know what will happen. we're talking about caring conservative who understand that if we keep going down the path, triablism could turn this in to a country that makes all the nice words about how we're not red states and blue states we're the united states and to red states and blue states and going to have mattresses. it [inaudible] >> well,, you know, one way, of course, to avoid the tie of the electoral college is for
1:53 pm
congress to set the size of the house of representatives at the even number. you might have a tie for speaker of the house. that would give us the, you know, that would give us -- on the values question, you know, we have i think that sometimes we forget that the united states during most of the history has been a culturally diaverse country from the colonial times. i think those of us who grew up or remember the universal popular cultural that the radio entertainment programs. the movies of the 19 30s and '40s. there was a media set up, there was a huge advantage to presenting a popular culture that appealed to everybody. you had the sort of period we had the very strong universal popular culture in some cases. we don't live in that kind of country anymore. we have 133 cable channels. we lost the language of the
1:54 pm
universal culture. we have differing values a z we did in the past. the founders established a federal government with limited powers. with a lot of room for states localities and voluntary associations to do much of society's work. as they specifically made the graft -- neutral on religion. they could have an established church if they wanted 0 to or didn't have to have one. we wouldn't have nationally. we were going to leave religion, federal government federal government was going to be neutral on that. that mostly worked although there were difficult if i. we had something called the sieve war because you got a federal government issue, slavery in the territory. congress was given specific power to regulate the territory. you couldn't avoid that issue. and we had civil war. one of the problems with big government in my judgment, and i think it is a bigger government, when you something like obamacare it becomes a federal
1:55 pm
issue whether or not your insurance policy should cover the $9 month you need to pay for contraceptive at walmart. that's the less than the price of two pumpkin lattes at starbucks. it became a national issue. we a speaker at, you know, the prime time tv hour at the democratic national convention speaking on the issue and advocating her position. a lot of people in the country have strong views based on their personal moral belief or the personal religion beliefs. on both sides of the issue beliefs which are not crazy,er racial or vicious. they happen to be different. and we have big government makes this a national issue where as the founders idea was a lot of things like this would be handled in different ways so people could reach different resolutions nationally and so i think, you know, the supreme court made abortion a national issue in 1973. people have strong moral views
1:56 pm
on both sides. in beliefs which are important in their life. we cannot expect those to be expelled from politics when government makes those decisions. >> henry, you get the last word today. >> people talk a lot about bipartisanship or unity. i think there are types of false unity we should talk about. one, the false unity we pretended that moral values are hinges that could be -- could be laid as political doors. i think miking is eloquent. the other type of false imriewnty when one party say to the other it's on my terms. and when i hear a lot of times people on the right i get the impression that unity will be fine as long as we're talking about the shade of red from rose to ruby. on the left, the last two days, the underlying assumption we won the election e even though you won the house and the unity is
1:57 pm
going to be invading the shade of blue you can accept from perry wing l to navy. and i think what americans want is for us to look at america as marriage. and the democrats and the republicans are a spouse and the country is the family. and what you learn when you're in a marriage is that you have to listen to the other spouse, you have to understand what the other spouse's viewpoint is even if you disagree with them. and if you care more about the family than you do about yourself, you have to make accommodations to respond to the other person's deepest desires and aspirations. even if it would be discomfort you or you disagree with them. we will have a real bipartisanship when we can have red and blue come together and debate about the shades of purple. understanding they won't get everything they want. and until and unless that can happen, we only be talking about false unity which means that
1:58 pm
civility will continue to decrees and political war will continue to have happen. [applause] i'd like to thank all of my wonderful panelists and colleagues at aei. thank you for coming. we'll see you in two years. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]
1:59 pm
[inaudible conversations] ..
2:00 pm
founder and president laszo strategy and this strategic communication that we are not partisan, very, very honored and delighted to have a terrific set up panels to offer the audience here today. we have to audiences, we have a live audience here. we are inside the capital area where the rayburn house office building in a hearing room of the foreign affairs committee i would like to thank congressman brad sherman for providing the room for us.
2:01 pm
he had a big win last night over congressman burr men. i would like to thank congressman berman to his service to america and congratulate all of the congress people who ran for office whether they either won or lost last night. it is an incredible thing to have to serve or to be willing to serve. it's a very painful process to go through the negative campaigning. very hard on the candidates and their family and i think the american voters o a debt of gratitude to all who were willing to serve, whether they win or lose. i have picked a very distinguished panel of folks to talk today. from left to right to try to make it convenient for you, i have ceded them in a way that i think is approximately from their left to right. so on my right and you're left i am going to start with our first speaker. but the way that i'm going to do it is i'm going to very briefly introduce each speaker then i'm going to ask them the same question which is about what
2:02 pm
happened in the election and what it means and they will spend about five minutes and we will go on to the next speaker and we are going to have an opportunity to do a lot of q&a. this is going to become again, non-partisan. we have both political parties represented in a wide range of views and you will hear the broad spectrum. i'm going to start with ann lewis. ann lewis is a real mentor. to me she is a complete superstar in strategic communications. people know her as the former white house communications director under president bill clinton and also the shining light behind the political operation of hillary clinton. so let me start with ann lewis. >> thank you. [inaudible] >> what happened and what does that mean for america? >> i think probably while they're still counting votes in florida -- [inaudible] >> is my microphone not on?
2:03 pm
there is a green light. i apologize. i saw that little green light and it was subtle. here's what we know. we certainly know the president was reelected in the democrats have picked up seats in the senate which is contrary to what anybody in washington i think even as late as labor day we know the house is going to stay roughly the same so i bring you know present return from florida. i would like to spend more time and what does that mean for us going forward. first i share the admiration all around for president obama campaign team. they were technically close to perfect in the first responsibility of the campaign team that is to identify and turnout voters. they've planned and executed it, and in every step of the way they know what votes they needed and they went out and got them. they began weeks before election
2:04 pm
day banking favorable votes in the states where they had already had people on the ground to produce. so one that was the standard for future campaigns so identify your voters to turn out and some people would think by the verging on harassment to turn them out but it did work. the claim i want to make beyond that however is the technical aspect will get a lot of attention. how much of this is actually policy based. they are about policies not just about campaign techniques. the first policy that president obama that clearly had a huge impact is the decision to go in and rescue the american auto industry. that is to use government funds to keep an american industry going. an example of what for democrats is an ongoing principal the
2:05 pm
government can be a force for good. the government isn't always the enemy. so the rescue of the auto industry, very important. the second policy that had direct electoral consequences was his decision to reach out to what we call the dreamers, young people who had been brought by their parents didn't have the appropriate papers for citizenship but were here and for americans in every way and wanted to build a future and they were hoping to go to college and the president's announcement of an executive decision to suspend the deportation for young people in this category was a very strong signal. he shared their hopes and understood their aspirations. he welcomed them to america. very important. and as we see in the numbers from the hispanic community again, understood and appreciated. the third is a cluster of issues around the question of women's
2:06 pm
health. while the affordable care act itself may still be on the popular, the provisions are not care for women, health care for women, no more gender discrimination come a series of preventive services like cancer screenings, like birth control are very popular. and so, to the extent that republicans beginning with their nominee made it an issue that they were going to rollout these protections, these provisions we are not on your side. so the auto industry reaching out to the dreamers you have a symbolic way of saying to people and a real policy based way we understand your lives and we want to be helpful. it's the issue of marriage which we said in maryland, equal marriage saying that the ranks and responsibilities of marriage should be open to everyone, no matter who they are or who they love. i don't think that we fully
2:07 pm
appreciate yet how important the issue is as a civil rights issue to young voters. so when i look at the huge turnout and the heavy margin president obama got with young voters i would say again a smaller coaster of what they see as civil rights issues making college more affordable and marriage work. the bottom line again that may look to an outsider as if not much has changed. we still of president obama as president and the democratic majority as the senate and the republican maturity in the house but look at the different people that have now been elected to congress. look not just at the faces, but their life experiences and you will see a change to truly reflect the changes in america. in the senate we have four new women senators. we have six incumbents all of whom got reelected and we have five challengers or five new candidates. four of the five reelected.
2:08 pm
if i step back and look at this election year as a whole there were 33 senate seats up for the reelection. one in three of the democratic nominees for women. this is a historic marker for the party and to conceive of voters liked it, to mount. so the republican side for a series of reasons the senate has actually gone down by one because they had to retirements and only one new candidate. i will continue to watch that but i think a growing number of women in the senate is very important. reflected by the way that continuing number of women in the electorate. in 2008, something like 10 million more women than men who voted and gave president obama a 13-point margin. i cannot say yet this morning with the final turnout will be in the election, but we know now that women have given president obama a 12-point margin.
2:09 pm
you get a false point margin among the majority of the electorate you are doing pretty well and so i would say paying attention to again and the role of the women voters and hispanic voters, the role of the young voters and their enthusiasm and then go back and look at the policies on which was based and the policies which inspired this turnout, and you have a better sense of what this election means. >> i'm going to turn to the political right instead of going to eleanor. to mix it up i'm going to turn it over laise hazelwood in the car local party bertrand president of grassroots targeting which is a microtargeting firm. i will also see that her husband, dan hazelwood is one of the leading republican political consultant also both are good friends of mine, and she is a working mom. so tough in the world of women
2:10 pm
that this is i believe the first panel that i've ever done on politics. nobody is here for affirmative action i can assure you this is a superstar panel. >> my husband and i were talking about this last night and i just -- the first thought that occurred to me is this is campaign 101. that is the bottom line. and the way that i look at it is the first thing that happened is the democrats and i've got to give the obama team great credit that the turnout their base and they did a fabulous job of it and there is a lot that we need to learn from them. the next thing is you don't like it, everyone complains about it, but the bottom line is it works and the obama team went in and found him early. they spend their money this
2:11 pm
summer and they went after him and romney wasn't given a chance and that works. again, campaign 101. the last one is you always have to rebut the negatives against you. again, it is a fundamental part of campaigning, and romney let that summer go unanswered. let all of those attacks go unanswered, and that was a problem. he was defined. and as you saw on the other side we look at the house they did the exact opposite once they knew they were going to be attacked the went on the offensive immediately and look where we are. we are pretty much the same place as the house. the house campaigned early and the results are very apparent that again that works. so just for the future, i look
2:12 pm
at this as a learning experience. this is 2004 all over again. the republicans are the ones with the wake-up call this time instead of the democrats. the sides have changed, and we need to look back at this election and again review our turnout techniques and go from there to risk and a thank you, blaise. i'm going to turn to eleanor clift, distinguished writer she's published many books and is a contributor to the magazine and the least web site and a regular panelist on the syndicated talk show, laughlin group. what happened from your perspective and what does it mean for america? >> mine is lower than the ladies i would say. but on my political perspective i am 10 feet tall today. [laughter] >> it was a good night for
2:13 pm
democrats, for women, for pot smokers, for the new emerging electorate, and this was not your grandfather's electorate. ronald reagan ran at a very different america. ronald reagan would probably have a difficult time in today's republican primary process. and i think there are lessons here on the republican side and the democratic side and they are not as technocratic gas blaise is suggesting and i think those lessons can be learned pretty easily. it is the remaking of the party's approach if the republican can't be a national party if they turn off african-americans, hispanics and now women, and the republican party today is 90% white, and the democratic party i and understand the caucus returns to
2:14 pm
washington will be 50% majority will be 50% or i guess majority, minority and women. and when we look at the state of the union next year, that divide the republicans on one side and the democrats on the other and the overwhelming white maleness of the republican party comes through. i love males. i gave birth to three of them that there are not enough to keep the republican party alive, and i should add as a footnote my sons are not contributing to the republican party. so, there are lessons here. the republican party is going to have to go through some rethinking and there are lessons here for president obama. he did see his political mortality. if there was a word here from my
2:15 pm
republican friends that is recklessness to the obama presidency that he -- the celebrity he can coast. i think that has been purged from him and he understands in large part because of the although bailout which was a courageous decision. even within the democratic party he didn't. it was cold and clear and we need more of those kind of decisions and that and i think that he needs to be mindful that he has to tell his story along the way. he was terrible at message making during most of his presidency. they lost control of the health care debate. that cost them the house in 2010 and it's going to probably be a long time before we get the house back because of the
2:16 pm
redistricting and all of that. and that's the one sour note for democrats coming out of the election is what to do about the house and is there a way back to the majority so there is going to be rethinking of their approach and leadership. governor romney will have some kind of post, you know of the bully pulpit for business in america bolstering business and i thought that it was really classy and that's probably who she is he doesn't run alone he runs with a party he couldn't change the party even if he got elected and so i think i would
2:17 pm
like to see governor romney have some sort of a prominent role. i know that we have blood between these two men but there's a lot of gamesmanship in politics if you're the winner you can afford to be generous and the president-elect obama reach out to hillary clinton after a very bitter primary and look at all the good that has come from that. that is my wish to the future. >> i'm going to turn to rick dunham who is one of washington's season and insightful political reporters. she covers politics and he's also the president of the board at the national press club journalism institute as it crossed the the past president of the press club. rick dunham? >> thank you, jennifer. i have attended a lot of jennifer -- i have attended a lot of jennifer's sessions over the years, so it is a special honor to be on the panel. i hope that i can in part enough wisdom here to make it work.
2:18 pm
in my new life as a web writer with journalists, multimedia all the time, i like to do top-10 lists, and because we have five minutes i am just going to do the top six takeaways from the election last night for me. number one, and was the lead of my analysis that ran in the papers from albany to some francisco that there truly is a demographic tidal wave and the republicans ignore it at their own peril. in the past four decades the percentage of the minority voters in the electorate has gone from 9% to 28%. if you have the same electorate as we had in 2000, romney would have won yesterday. the same way that four years ago if we had the electorate in 1988, john mccain would have
2:19 pm
defeated barack obama. subjects are their -- so the facts, are there. if the minority voters turn out, the republicans would have a disadvantage to the code is set to start with. the latino vote was huge. you look at the states, florida, colorado, nevada you could even argue iowa but state after state the latino vote could be taken out and the democrats would have lost. even florida was 613 code 39. the cuban americans are not -- they are no longer the majority. in florida among latinos but also the younger generation of cuban americans is voting like puerto rico or dominican latinos. they are not looking like the anti-castro parents and grandparents. asian-americans the was the biggest shift. 75-25. i remember covering the 2000 race.
2:20 pm
i think bush actually one of the asian-american vote before september 11th the asian american vote was a swing vote leaning republican. yesterday 3-1 democratic. they are mirror images and it's roughly 60-40 and demographically which areas are growing to the urban areas and rural america as we would want to bet on the rural america for the population center going ahead. young and old, it is again the youngest voters are the most pro obama although i will say that the 18 to 21 voters are less pro obama and the people slightly older than they are, the 20, 21 to 30. but still, which would you rather have? young voters who are going to the voters for 60, 70 years or
2:21 pm
people who are 21 when ronald reagan was elected to the seniors. they are not the greatest generation, they are not the new deal roosevelt democrats and the people who are going to be tomorrow's seniors are people like me and who are not your same kind of demographics as the greatest generation, the gender gap republicans can't be the party just as older white men and a really is important to years ago the republicans did quite well with women across-the-board and yesterday you saw the gender gap among women roughly the same as four years ago although the men opened up and romney did a lot better than mccain is an
2:22 pm
evangelical protestant if you look in virginia that could have been the difference all alone the percentage of the voting population the was evangelical born-again protestants went down significantly over four years and a lot of states are going to have to look at north carolina as more and more people are not the old jesse helms a born-again evangelical protestants in georgia you may see demographic changes that make the state more competitive going ahead. i will be quick on the other takeaways pittard number to the polls are right. there was a lot of debate about where the polls by yes and legitimate debate about the methodology the screens for likely voters and do we get it right in this era where a lot of people use cell phones and not land lines as their primary means of communication.
2:23 pm
the polling is an art of science and a very good job by and large almost every leading polling organization. they are the out liar still in the margin of error that is a big take away. there is a mess of the undecided voter i think all year long we have stories to are the undecided voters welcome it was people that were parking themselves when one direction or another and depending which we did was your definition of who was an undecided voter changed or the people obama was ahead in the polls, so the people that were undecided were people who were still dissatisfied with the economy, with obama's performance if they were not sold on romney so they were saying so the people saying they were from romney and undecided were the people that you could be for obama but they didn't like the performance in the
2:24 pm
debate so it was a myth of who was undecided. they're going to analyze we have to analyze it has persuaded voters. so the way that we as reporters and allies undecided voters is ridiculous. member for, independence are no longer the swing group. romney won independence and a lot of the key battleground states. the independent voters and lost. the way they define themselves now in this era of very strong partisanship tend to lean slightly republican if face would even or a democrat wins it is a very good year for democrats. it's the mirror image of moderates. moderates lean democratic, but moderates also are a skilling storch. you have to look at people that call themselves moderates and independents and some way and it came or the combination of the two of them is your swing the electorate but i think that we
2:25 pm
dismiss daughter it's because people were saying that leans democratic we should dismiss independent them because that group leans republican from the combination of the two that we have to analyze going forward. the suburbs can be analyzed as a whole new look they won the suburbs by two points. look at northern virginia. the blue state suburbs of philadelphia just wiped out romney in the city of philadelphia to the suburbs also light of romney d.c. and los angeles and san francisco is all very space and a loss vegas and phoenix and the suburbs of dallas, houston, san antonio, atlanta, charlotte and south carolina were very republican, so calling the suburban analyzing by saying the suburbs doesn't work. you have to look at each individual suburb or the region of the country and finally number six you have to rethink
2:26 pm
the way in politics. this is a $6 billion election-year status quo results i think the biggest success when it comes to money in politics and i'm not talking about the methods that the macrois karl rove sabrue de billionaires' from billions of dollars. the more effective way to pay the voters directly. there's more and more return from your investment and that would conclude by saying the supreme court of the united states is the second most important institution in the united states in aiding the economic recovery because next to the fed they have done more money, more stimulus into the economy and part of the states like nevada, florida, ohio, colorado, pennsylvania and california in any institution. they may even be more important
2:27 pm
in the fed we have to look at the money and politics. as blaise says what is effective and i said what isn't effective in changing a lot of opinions. >> this is very interesting of the comments from all of the speakers i want to ask that particular demographic group that none of you touched on despite the consistent theme i heard of the democracy really being in tactful in america one out of every five americans has a disability and 51% of the likely voters said they have a family member with a disability. yet at the national press club when there was an opportunity for as you know as the past president for both the romney campaign and the obama campaign to send someone to speak about the disability issues the romney campaign chose not to attend and showed the baker chose not to issue a position paper on disability. so i wanted to ask why he given
2:28 pm
that one out of every five americans has a disability 51% of american likely voters has a family member why isn't there more of a conversation about that demographic within our society and our election process? >> the short answer is in an election that's revolving around the role of the government if you are for small government why would you want to get into a conversation about how do you assist people with disabilities because it implies that there is a role for the government which might mean a program that might mean money so i think it is just not a conversation that they would want to engage in right before an election. >> i'm going to step back a bit and say that it becomes a part of a mix of issues around caregiving that are affected directly important to women who are usually the caregivers whether of children were the older members of the family this fall's to the women and so they
2:29 pm
see it as a part of their role as caregivers. again i would say disability is an issue about how we care for one another and how do i meet my responsibilities as a mother come as a daughter, and when you talk to the voters about their role was caregivers whether it is the family medical leave act, for example, which was one of the big successes, early successes of the clinton administration or the new rules and the affordable care act we say for example no insurance companies cannot cap the amount of money that goes to someone because of illness. if you listen to president obama talk about the family whose daughter had leukemia and because of the affordable care at they would now continue to get support where otherwise was about to run out. disability gets woven into a set of issues that can also be described as the role of government, but i think a more human way to say at this again
2:30 pm
how do we help one another meet those responsibilities? >> i think it is some opportunity for republicans and an opportunity there was lost this year. i think that george bush in 2000 and the way that he tried to define himself as a different kind of republic and one of the ways of education and he talked about the self bigotry of experts to expectations. the republicans would you with this directly with try to figure out the role of government that could be helpful and also to talk about the private sector and the imperative for all americans to get together whether the government is involved or not would be a plus i just don't think that was a part of the thinking this year. i think that eleanor hit the nail on the head for why the republicans didn't talk about it.
2:31 pm
>> given the other issues do you agree with ann? when i think of disability advocates i think of the converse woman cathy mcmorris rogers and i think of tom ridge and of the fact that the aiea was passed by a republican administration. there wasn't more to target that constituency. >> i will just go back to the campaign 101. you have to talk to people in the fact they didn't show what is a problem to the demographics they were talking about since former president bush just talked to his genex and we didn't see that in this campaign and again i just want to go back to that simple statement but i would also like to take another step back. i'm not sure that i agree completely that this is all about demographics and i am that i am in the minority on the panel, but i think about the 49%
2:32 pm
nation. i mean, that's where we were in 2004 and everyone who said that this is another 2,040 election, while it is. i remember walking around with a powerpoint and encouraging people to turn out in the first page of the powerpoint was the 49% mention, and i see that we are in that, and after every election, every four years in the demise of what ever political party lost the will have to redefine themselves and again, i simply see it as 49%. >> so, we are going to take questions from the audience that this is what is going to work if you want to ask a question i'm going to ask you to come to the microphone. it works a lot better for c-span if people can actually hear what you are asking. so, if you have a question please make your way to the
2:33 pm
microphone. we would be very happy to hear what it is that is on your mind i would ask the question and not a statement so that we can be answering questions up here and not hearing the political views that you identify yourself when you come up. so as people are making their we have to ask questions i would like to ask a question about the future because we really talked about what happened in the election but we haven't hit on what does it mean. ann touched on it as did others, $6 billion was spent, and a lot of time and energy was spent on this campaign. there were voters across america that took as much as six hours to stand in line to vote. and at the end of this, we have the same president, the same house majority leader and the same senate leader. so what is that going to mean in terms of policy as it moves forward here in washington the
2:34 pm
fact that we had the same majority leader in the senate and i'm glad we do come he is a great leader the fact that he's still the majority leader doesn't mean there hasn't been a change. it's about their life experiences. it's about what they bring to the table. the fact is in the state of new hampshire we now have a woman governor. we have two women senators on the market and one republican and we to believe to have two members of congress. new hampshire is from pioneer in the politics in many ways and we know that he cast the first vote and a pioneer in this kind of representation i want to go back for a moment by the way you talk about disability and as we were thinking about this i realized when i hear maggie talk about why she got interested in politics and what it meant for her it starts with having a disabled child. so, when we do hear the talk
2:35 pm
specifically about disability in my experience, it is often by candidates or leaders to bring to the table this is for my family and then the bill on that and say what can we do for everyone else clacks >> i would just add that given the state of the economy, the expectation early on was that mitt romney should win and would win and that he would bring with him a republican senator and what have a unified control. they beat that back against a lot of of immunizing long-term suggested that's what would happen and of the republican senate was taken for granted until maybe two months ago when some of the republican candidates began to say things that put them outside of the mainstream my guess is a kind way to put it and the democrats had some very good candidates of
2:36 pm
the reasons for just decided kind of individually so i agree the number of status quo i believe the towson washington is very different and the rising republican tide was turned back into the democrats are more firmly in control and the lessons have been learned for four years may be. >> can you expand on that in the fiscal cliff and some of the policies? >> i think i want to move ahead to the future. i don't have a good clear crystal ball because i think it is all things that still to be determined. number one, barack obama to reach out to republicans starting with mitt romney, but really the leadership and some of the key players who might be able to work with in a bipartisan way by john mccain as the house members and
2:37 pm
senators in a second, legislation was to govern from the center out or from the base over to get a majority. on the republican side how do they respond if obama reaches out clacks i strongly believe that he will reach out and that he doesn't realize that with a fiscal cliff facing us he has to do something how do republicans respond. i think the senate could easily come up with a deal with the white house. the question is then what happens in the house and there are two questions with john boehner. number one is he temperamentally willing to go to legislate especially if he gets major concessions from the president? i think and my answer is yes that raises the second question can he bring his caucus along?
2:38 pm
yes a couple of the leading tea party members of the house republicans' majority were defeated, but that caucus is still as conservative as it was before last night. i don't know the answer, but we have issues that could really divide us. immigration where the president is going to move ahead very quickly. i would say the ten to one deal with every republican presidential candidate said they would not accept me not be ten to one, it may be forced-1 or 5-1 where the republicans get 80% of what they want. deacons a yes to 80% of what they want. and the final one is the supreme court. especially what happens if an temmins the leah or anthony kennedy retire. forget ruth bader ginsburg. even if there is a quote come main street nominee and president obama amine is the
2:39 pm
first asian-american justice to the supreme court will the republicans do in that case? i wish i could give you the answers. i.t. we will see more by partisanship and we are going to see a lot of lighting also. >> i don't think that president obama told us what he plans to do and injury curious what he plans to do. he told us that he's not mitt romney but he didn't give us what he's going to do with the budget in the coming years. so i don't know. >> is there a blueprint for what he tried to do with john boehner and isn't there a blueprint on what his policies i just don't buy the notion that we have no idea what he's going to do. i feel we have a pretty good idea. >> what would you like him to say? >> i would like him to tell us what he plans to do with the budget and how we are going to
2:40 pm
deal with the fiscal cliff. >> i think now we are in that period. stat i think you are right on that. where barack obama never told us exactly what he wanted he didn't do what bill clinton did and proposal on the table and i think that that's what we are going to see. the president put out an immigration proposals as he embraced simpson-bowles or a variant of that or bring everybody into the white house in bipartisan leadership and come up with something behind closed doors that can pass. this is where blaise is right. we don't know the answer of the approach of the president to either one can work and either one has risks. the first one has more risk without plan that the republicans can knock down. the second is more dangerous for the republican leadership if they cut a deal and can't bring the followers along.
2:41 pm
>> two issues to questions. one argues surprised that the issue of mormonism played such a small part apparently? and second is that one conclusion that the republican party might draw that they needed someone who was a standard more publicly determined than permitted to the precise these issues and will be more strongly in such a way as not to move and shift the positions during the course of the campaign pitted >> blaise, do you want to take that one? >> sure. i would again go back to being a 49% nation. the issue's letter how strongly
2:42 pm
they were talked about is another issue and i don't necessarily think that again made a difference how conservative or how liberal because the base on each side is what it is in the in terms of not talking about the religion i would give the democratic party credit because they didn't use that in the campaign and something they could have done and also i give the campaign credit and romney himself for addressing his religion early on and it just goes back again to campaign 101. rebut what you know or be on the forefront of what you know on the offense.
2:43 pm
that's how i would address it. >> i'm not surprised, i am pleased that mormonism didn't emerge as an issue but it makes good sense. americans don't like to see people attacked because of religion could. >> for being an implicit and diverse country is what we like about ourselves but we are strong enough to include different kinds of forms of religion it would have been a political mistake to take that on to read the republicans would conclude they would have done better with a candidate who waited -- who didn't wait until he was in the primary to announce that he was severely conservative. what we do it that way. for example mitt romney met when he was a moderate pro-choice governor of massachusetts.
2:44 pm
to turn to the place where he was i think that when you look at the results of this election and as i say you can drill the direct connection between president obama and the voting support that he got in the face of this, the republicans decide that what they really need to do is go back and do it even more conservative again far be it for me to try to persuade them otherwise to get another election in four years, but it wouldn't be wise. >> on the religion question, i agree with blaise but i would add one thing which is to look at the polling of the people that said they would be less likely to vote on a candidate because they were more men, the majority of those people thought that barack obama was a muslim who was born in kenya so the demographic wasn't there to make it a negative but it is true that democrats couldn't make it
2:45 pm
an issue some of the issues he took during the primary heard him specifically with regard to immigration reform i think it was new gingrich who said that from me was the most conservative on that issue and in the country not a good political position to become not a moral position either, and romney did best when he moved to the center. he became a new candidate in the debate and was so late in the game and he would be willing to do anything he wanted, but i think it was grover norquist who famously said does it matter who we have in the white house as long as he is republican and has ten digits and consign our legislation that is an example of a party controlling its
2:46 pm
candidate to a degree that i don't recall in my lifetime. >> next question. >> i don't often was in shock radio but this morning i bought the book. i'm stunned how many of the commentators are digging their heels in the right and just refuse to recognize that america is spoken by whatever margin. here is my question the shifting demographic in the country most of us seem to recognize that i don't think the republicans have a sense that their base is shrinking and that they will be reduced to the regional political base if they don't increase the fact that asians, latin latinos, any other group that you can think of is a part of this larger mosaic now. so my question is -- fighting 16 -- 14.
2:47 pm
the election will come before. but my question is what will it take to recognize the demographics shifted and they are not necessarily keeping pace with that change? >> back to me i guess. >> the republicans on the next panel which will be coming up in about ten minutes. ralph reed who heads the feet and freedom group and jim pinkerton will be talking about a lot of the republican issues don't feel that. >> don't forget the majority in the congress, the american people come and there still remains a gop in the congress. >> i will think of one more that might be to add to that i don't want to confuse a radio
2:48 pm
talk-show host with the country at large. radio talk-show hosts debt and maintain their audience by being extreme. the angrier the louder the further you are the more you get people to listen. we have to say something different. they do not necessarily speak to the country and i think today they do not speak for the congressional republican leadership which is looking at what are the best interest of their members and what is it that they are going to do in the next few years so that they can go back in 2014 if you say that the congressional race of congress, so yes they are going to whip it up because that is their shtick, that is what they do but it is the great enterprise system at work not necessarily electoral politics. since my first point there truly is a demographic tidal wave and the republicans ignore their own
2:49 pm
peril. on the every with your point precisely. what i don't think the first thing republicans should do is change course. i don't think that of a sudden -- i mean, blaise explained they still have power but to me but has to be done is the debate. the equivalent of what happened after the defeat of walter mondale and michael dukakis, the democrat had to talk about it and out it came bill clinton and a different way of thinking and the democrats i think the republicans -- you can't say either romney did it wrong leave to many conservatives and we need to be moderate or romney lost because he is too moderate. you have to have a discussion of what you talk about which is the demographic changes, the cultural changes in the country at the economic changes and how to best approach it and i think that is a process.
2:50 pm
i don't think that is what you do right away. >> what does this question and for the presidential candidates that are already running around on the republican party? does that mean that marco rubio has a better chance than the other republican candidates because of the demographic challenge? >> well, you hear democrats looking at chris christi thinking he would be a great presidential candidate. >> which party? >> the republicans thinking of how off message he was and they don't like a number of things that he has done but i think somebody with appeal across the party is what you want in a presidential candidate and someone who can defend where he is. i think that he is quite appealing. >> are there other questions? if so, to the microphone. did you have a question? can you use the microphone please? >> we've already touched on a lot of these plans already but i
2:51 pm
was curious if you would be willing to engage in a little wednesday morning quarter backing. and analyze the romney campaign in the answer the question could he have won what could he have done differently? i had the impression that he was narrow in his approach and kept coming back to his business experience in economics and how he could help in that regard but it seemed like he was reluctant to go off in the direction keeping his message very narrow and i just wonder if you are to serve as a consultant what you would have done and if you think over the next weeks and months his campaign is going to be viewed as an abysmal failure because he did things wrong just curious about your reaction to that. >> who wants to take that first? >> the abysmal failure part will be for a lot of people on the right i think it was about as
2:52 pm
abysmally fielder netz john kerry. it's identical races and the difference between romney losing and bush winning was the demographic shift in the country of 2004 to 2012. but looking at where the republicans go, again i think that the best way to approach it is to try to figure out how do you deal with the key groups is it done better among women and with the help of todd akin and richdmurdock you look and there is a small part of immigration hearing to the right on immigration, and it's not his unwillingness to have a discussion with the
2:53 pm
voters, and then with african-american voters and romney didn't have anything to do with this, all have talked about the voter suppression or democrats trying to cheat turnout tremendously among the african-american voters. >> we tried and i would be interesting to hear from blaise on this but to parts, one in the primary, to in the primary i would say and one to the general that i thought really? the first would be the debate in which we are sitting next to rick perry and he moved strong to the right on immigration and attacked rick perry and never fought for signing a dream act in texas that would be the first one. it may have worked in the primary but it's a long-term consequence. the second was saying he was going to get rid of planned parenthood to read this is a health care provider something
2:54 pm
like one in four or one in five in the united states so that at one point or another they've gone to planned parenthood with basic health care so did the major general election harder said there were steps he took consciously in the primary that i felt had paid for leader. the second was the one that blaise referred to that as the first priority usa ads or being run attacking his record and remember mitt romney was running on the record of the business so if you're going to run against him you had to go to the record that was the resume that he was offering but they went over and he didn't respond then so at the time they got to responding was the fault there were a lot of ads on the air and a lot going on if his responses couldn't be as powerful. >> to go back to the 2004 analogy, the veterans were
2:55 pm
eroded and he didn't respond and the obama campaign barletta page from that and ran all of those ads undermining romney's tarnishing it. i thought that strategy was smart at the time of the first debate was to look and that was to sure that conjecture and for a couple weeks i think that was the one real opening that romney had. >> i already talked about the campaign, and one thing that was never clear and just in terms of you need to talk to people looking back at 2,004 and
2:56 pm
president bush talking to hispanics when our party does talk to hispanics it works and there are lots of great examples and speaking back to 20161 person does have a bias and bobby jindal can articulate our conservatives and he's put them into practice in getting things done, so i do think that there is a great future with a lot of great leaders in the republican party who can articulate conservative parties. >> we have a terrific second panel coming up, but before we go to the second panel, and i do see some of our speakers here i
2:57 pm
want to ask if there was a standout for you in terms of personalities or players in this race. i was very struck that cnn and grew in the message boards if he wins on election night in any way that you could find the information you were looking for. i was really struck by margaret hoover was a political columnist that people thought she would not be smart and every time she speaks you think wow is she smart. who are the people who are starting to blow you away for the institutions that you thought played a major role. >> i would say going back to my original theory the victory lab ki kneal did and he was saying it before anybody else was saying that this was going to
2:58 pm
turn down to turnout and techniques and so i give him a lot of credits. >> i'm afraid this might be a little controversy all but i would say this was the year of the pole and he nailed it. on the political side i am really impressed and he is going to be a player. he could be the republican supreme court nominee if not a candidate for president or vice president. >> tell us more about cruz i don't think people have heard about him to the estimate he could become a supreme court clerk, he was the clerk to be serving in the senate along with senator blumenthal and lee and he's one of the smartest politicians i've ever -- he is one of the best debaters i've ever seen and you could see he is championing debater.
2:59 pm
he - irish and american and hispanic as we would write in the texas media. the first hispanic senator from texas. but he has an obama ability to reach out. he can speak to hispanics and a very conservative way but he also can reach out and conservative republicans and global republicans are very comfortable with that. >> before we go in going to ask folks for their biggest turkey and losers also leaned to the winners on this side. >> the castro brothers also from texas are stars and one is in congress and one is the mayor. >> people are going to say about what keen castro when he walks and i love your speech at the democratic convention. [laughter] >> they were identical. and i would hope that president
3:00 pm
obama reaches out to senator cruz very quickly. and then i would give kudos to sign and rosenberg, who has been researching and studying and telling us about the growing hispanic vote for a long time and i noticed that he predicted 335 electoral votes, and if florida comes in for the president obama i think simon is just about right. ..
3:01 pm
>> heidi heitkamp who not a lot of people in washington know who's going to be the senator from north dakota which does not come easily, just a fabulous person. but i think the hero in this, perhaps unsung at the moment, is emily's list which exists to support democratic women candidates in the house and senate and i suspect has one of the best won/lost records in any of the organizations working in this cycle and by far the most effective use of resources. i think if you compare how much emily's list raised and spent with the success of their candidates compared to some of the super pacs that we heard soften about, you're going -- so much about, you're going to find they did a heck of a lot better job with the money. >> and who were the losers this cycle? >> oh, gee. >> the billionaires who handed over all that money and didn't get much back for it. [laughter] i was going to say --
3:02 pm
>> they got shelley berkley's head in nevada. >> yes, and that's unfortunate. >> it's unfortunately -- unfortunate that they didn't get what they thought they were buying. >> i would say the biggest loser is karl rove who successfully appealed to a lot of people. they gave him their money, he would in turn enable them to keen even more -- keep even more. a fairly bottom line series of decisions. and, in fact, a lot of money was spent. i liked rick dunham's line, that ben bernanke, in effect, was the second stimulus. the supreme court acted as the second stimulus, excuse me, second only to the fed. because by opening the door to that kind of private spending, the supreme court certainly did a lot for the economy. but i've got to think that as they look at their bottom line, it's going to be a disappointment. >> and i say i'm going to pick a candidate. since indiana and missouri are just too easy and alan west is just too big a target, i'm going
3:03 pm
to go to michigan and pete hoekstra. he who killed his own campaign on super bowl night when he ran a racist ad with the chinese-american actress and made a race where the republican s actually might have been competitive into one that was just a cake walk for debbie stabenow who ran a very good campaign. >> i'd say two things. one, if we're just talking about candidates, i would say joe biden. i think he's going to have a tough four years, and especially because, i mean -- anyhow, i'll just leave it at that. [laughter] and i'd also just, you know, on the side i would say that not continuing to learn. um, there was a lot of, um, you know, false security that we had in our turnout operation, and, um, we stalled, and so i'd say that that was one of the biggest losers. >> well, this has been an
3:04 pm
utterly stimulating panel. we have a second panel that's going to start immediately. for those of you who are on c-span, if you want to send comments, go to www.laszlo strategies.com and send in comments to me on the web. i'd love to hear what the viewers at home are thinking. let me say thank you to ann lewis, eleanor clift, to blaze hazelwood for a tremendous set of comments and thank you to the audience who was here, and we're going to immediately go to our next panel. thank you all. [applause] >> cowelcome-- so welcome back,s and gentlemen. on behalf of laszlo strategies, i want to thank you for coming to this panel. as you can see, we're still missing a couple of our speakers who are on their way. um, i don't think the election
3:05 pm
was so bad that they're not going to show. i do think that they will, indeed, be here. a busy morning in the media world, and ralph reed and jim pinkerton had some other media appearances that they were making, but my understanding is that they are on their way. um, i'm going to start this by introducing the speakers one at a time, and i have the same question that i'm going to ask each of them to start with which is what happened in the election, and what does it mean for america. i'm going to start with dr. stanley greenberg who i've literally known for decades. um, he worked on the campaigns of bill clinton and tony blair, um, ehud barak, nelson mandela and others. globally, he's really known as the leading pollster in the world in terms of international campaigns. i will also say that he started to send me these delicious e-mails days ago where he was predicting with great boastfulness how sure he was of
3:06 pm
a great big obama victory and how early the election was going to be called x. so congratulations to stan for your accuracy. i was watching the videos that you and james carville were sending out to anyone and everyone who was willing to listen to you about how sure you were that obama was going to have a big night. so why don't we start with you, stan, in terms of what you saw, in terms of what happened, why it happened and what that means for america. thank you, jennifer -- nubble -- [inaudible] >> thank you, jennifer. , ralph reed has just come in. delighted to be on the panel with him and to share our moods and observations this morning. [laughter] a moment of silence -- no. [laughter] i will go, i will proceed. >> [inaudible] [laughter]
3:07 pm
>> i'm impressed. that's like 95% of the deal, so the scorecard is done. so jennifer does call me dr. greenberg. when i first became a pollster and i had been an academic, i was advised by my first client that i won with to get rid of the doctor because nobody who has a doctorate really knows anything practical about the world, but jennifer always reminds me of that heritage. and i'm delighted to work with jennifer on so many subjects. so the election was a, um, i think a quite big election, and the country faces some big issues. i'm going to just summarize fairly quickly some of the things that, you know, i saw in the demographics of this and the attitudes and the politics. i'm doing this based on the same
3:08 pm
kind of observation you did. i was doing bbc throughout the night, so i was processing in realtime. i was also, didn't get back to bed until 4:00 in the morning. i also have four surveys that are in the field, and i have partial data from those surveys in terms of what people -- exploring in more depth about what people were thinking about why they voted the way they did. and i'm happy, you know, to get some of that on the table. so let me start -- some of this is obvious, and then i'll go to, um, less obvious. i mean, the starting point i think is the demographics and culture of the country. and i'm sure the first panel, which i didn't see, had to have started there. now, the simple way to look at that is they just got the demographics wrong, there are these key groups that are growing.
3:09 pm
one has to respond to those, you know, groups. and if you look at the electorate that, you know, voted in 2008, it's very hard not to stop and say this is, you know, this is about a new america, an emerging america. it's an america that's been emerging now for some time. it has made itself known first in a dramatic way in the 2006 election. it was not the barack obama election, which i think one of the big mistakes of republicans looking back on obama's victory assumed that they could not replicate the electorate that elected him in 2008. but that electorate had been merging for a decade. and so it gave the democrats the majority in 2006. there was no real difference in terms of the composition of the electorate that elected him in 2008 with a, you know, somewhat higher turnout. and the fact that that electorate came out again, um, and even somewhat larger numbers -- that is each trend that there was in 2008 came
3:10 pm
more, i think, would have to force the country and political leaders to say that this is a country that, um, we have to recognize those changes. if you -- first, obviously, you begin with the minority populations, the latino and african-american populations that both of those, the hispanic population grew, had a bigger impact. but together, you know, were 28% of the electorate. they were 26 in the last election. it's growing 2% a year. you know, i looked at, you know, one of the -- relatively sure i looked at the nevada population numbers and said do you know that, wrote a note, said do you know that the hispanic population in nevada is growing 2% every year? and between this election and last election, um, it was an eight-point growth. and if you looked at the results in nevada, battle ground state, it was an eight-point race for obama. it wasn't a battleground state.
3:11 pm
nevada's now, you know, a part of the blue states. you know, the -- given the change of the country. so you have the growing diversity of the country. that diversity is much younger and defines the culture, very much the culture of the country, the attitudes of the country. um, the second piece in this is unmarried women. i'm interested in ralph's view of this. there's a lot of discussion on women, and it is true -- and there's two parts to the women piece -- it is true that the women's vote for obama remains the same in this election as it did in 2008 which is a big accomplishment. that also meant the dropoff of males. but the real support was unmarried women who were 20 -- who emerged with a larger proportion, were 23% of the electorate. so understand we have the entire minority population which is about 28% that has overlapped, but it is mostly not overlap.
3:12 pm
you then have 23% of the electorate who are unmarried women, who are voting 70% -- close to 70% for obama. they are as important to what's happening as the, as the minority piece of this. understand that a majority of american households now are unmarried, okay? and that is a growing phenomenon, okay? so we have a growing minority, growing -- okay? young people were 19% of the electorate. now, i have to tell you in my models i had dropped it to, like, 15. i made the assumption the young people were never coming in with the kind of hope they did in 2008, okay? i was wrong on that. they were 19% of the electorate. they went up from last time in a tough economy. and young people are very much, again, culturally, you know, drive this and what kind of country we are and what media responds to, the young people. and then you have to add, you know, postgraduates are, again,
3:13 pm
one in five. and, again, particularly women. the most well educated women who were reacting to a whole range of issues that played out in this election, that group is growing as well as a portion of the electorate heavily for obama. so all of these trends -- but these trends are not just demographic trends, they're cultural trends, they're attitudinal trends that represent a world view that it is, you know, it is not just that we need to spend more time, put out more spokespeople, we need to target them better, you know, we need -- this is about your world view. has to do with your comfort level with diversity of the country, multiculturalism, has to do with how open you are to the outside world, has to do with secularism and faith, has to do with the role of women and family. there's a whole range of attitudes that are correlated with this. and this coalition would have had a bigger impact but for how hard the economy was. and republicans tried as hard as possible not to have cultural
3:14 pm
issues come into play because the two coalitions are, frankly, formed by these demographic and cultural patterns more than economics. it's the cultural issues that have more intensity as we've seen on both sides in this process. the problem is that, for the republicans, is that these things are, you know, are strong, and they're growing. the republican -- i think we've reached a point on this that the republicans cannot treat this like global warming. we can't have the entire science community, you know, 98% of the scientists say that global warming's happening, it's caused by human behavior and say, well, we have a different view, it's contested. okay? at some point you can't, you know, and we saw it in the polling, in their rejecting what the polling was saying, that the polls -- we had a poll that had the obama lead at 3.8, the major polls, abc and others, had the lead at pew at, you know, at 3. i think we'll see by today that
3:15 pm
obama's lead will probably be in the three-point range. and remember that gore's number grew steadily well after the election. because there are all kinds of, you know, contested ballots that are, you know, yet to be counted. i knew in arizona in one congressional district we're doing 70,000 provisional ballots because republicans tried to suppress the vote and used a whole range of tactics. but those votes aren't counted yet, so that this number's going to go up. it's going to have a big, i think, national lead, amazing victory given the economic climate but also, obviously, an electoral college landslide. and the question is do the republicans come to terms with those patterns, and do they deal with things like immigration reform? if i was them, i'd get comprehensive immigration reform off the table.
3:16 pm
welfare reform was the most important thing bill clinton did in term of changing the parties fortunes. i think republicans would be wise to deal with that. and they ought to be dealing with the disenfranchisement of voters. you can't say that, all right, next time we're going to switch although we spent the last election trying to deny you the chance to vote. this is a generational impact. we watched how it happened with african-americans in the past. when you got over 70% of the vote here for barack obama amongst latinos, it can only be produced by the republican party running as anti-immigrant and also trying to deny people the right to vote. that is a fundamental, it has a fundamental impact, and it's going to take a long time to change. and rough address they're going to have. there's two other pieces, and i'm just going to say it, i'm not going to talk about it to give people more time. the second is the republican brand and the tea party. that hangs over them. you know, if you looked at all the memos the republican
3:17 pm
pollsters wrote before the election -- belligerent memos, some of them my friends -- saying there is no way you're going to have a six-point party id or seven-point party id advantage for the democrats in this election. you know, we haven't had that in, you know, that was like 2008 in the landslide obama. well, there was a six-point democratic party id advantage in this election, the people that voted. and you also had if you look at the favorabilities, republican party but above all, the tea party. probably the most unpopular, you know, organization out there that defined the party and played out through the senate races. so you have a republican brand problem. and, you know, the last thing i would say is the middle class. at the heart of this election is the economy, the future of the middle class is the central question. do we have middle class jobs, do we have rising incomes? on that question obama led by 12 points. it's why he was on your side. there's real questions whether we had a plan.
3:18 pm
i won't talk about it, but i do have data that relates to it. because romney did fairly well with people believing that he would address the jobs question, and it's less clear what obama would do. but they thought his goals were right and who he was going to battle for were right, and that played out in this election. so why don't i stop there. >> thank you, stan. i'm going to turn now to ralph reed who, actually, is going to have to leave a little bit early, so i want to apologize in advance for that. we're trying to get a lot of events put in together the day after the election, it's very difficult. but it was really important to me, ralph, that you came. ralph reed is a republican strategist who comes from the faith community. he is the head of the founder and chairman of the faith and freedom coalition. he was a senior adviser to bush/cheney campaigns in 2000-2004, and, ralph, i saw you in action in the primaries with your organization hosting these major events that every single one of the republican presidential candidates came to, every single one of them met with you, spent a lot of time
3:19 pm
with you. this has been a big, big election for the faith community. >> uh-huh. >> what did you see, and what does that mean for the future of america? >> well, let me, let me try to be brief if i can to allow for more interplay, but i want to address two things. the first is more narrowly because it was kind of, you know, the vineyard that i work is the faith community, specifically faithful catholics and evangelicals. and then i want to talk a little bit about some of the things that stan touched on which is the republican brand, some of these demographic changes which have been going on, frankly, for a long time. um, but i'll start with the faith community. um, my organization, and freedom coalition, built a file, a prequalified voter file of 17.1 million evangelicals and 6.3 million faithful, frequently-mass-attending catholics in the top battleground states of which there were 16 this cycle.
3:20 pm
it, obviously, narrowed at the end. but as we went into the cycle, it was 16 states; senate, house and presidential targets. so, you know, give or take 23.5 million voters, we contacted every one of those voters 7-12 times. we householded them down so we weren't literally contacting every one of them separately because a lot of them were married. um, but we mailed every one of them three times, we phoned every one of them three times. we had 13.2 million cell phone numbers of evangelical voters. anywhere or where early voting began we texted them that early voting began that day. that text went out at 7 a.m. it included a link to their early voting location. and all the evidence anecdotally, exit polling, our own postelection survey which we just released at the national press club and it'll be available at f fcoalition.com
3:21 pm
shows that this constituency turned out in the largest numbers ever in a presidential election at least since we've been polling them which goes back to the mid '70s, and that they voted for romney by a margin comparable to how they voted for bush in '04. the high point sort of top lines are they increased from 23% of the electorate four years ago to 27% of the electorate. that's just the evangelical piece. the faithful catholics, those are catholics who attend mass at least once a week or more often, they were another 10% of the electorate. the evangelicals according to our poll votes 77 percent for romney, according to the network exit poll they voted 78% for romney. that's the same share of the vote that bush got in 2004. the faithful catholics voted 67-32%. that's a swing of 35 points in
3:22 pm
how they voted compared to four years ago. four years ago obama won the catholic vote by 14 points. he split the faithful catholic vote. this time he won the catholic vote by two points. that, by the way, largely on the strength of his overperformance among hispanic catholics. he lost the white catholic vote by ten points, he lost the frequently-maas-attending catholic vote by 35 points. now, he won last night, okay? because this is not enough. evangelicals are a quarter of the vote, in the an off year they'll be a third of the vote. if these kind of voting patterns continue, obama's in for a slaughter in 2014. because as we saw in 2010, these people came. they keep coming. but the young voters fell from 18 to 13% of the electorate in
3:23 pm
2010, and the african-american vote fell from 13 to 10. the evidence is that this is a personal victory, not a political victory. they voted for obama, they came for obama. and i have to say i was surprised, because there wasn't a lot of evidence in the polling. i didn't know people were adjusting their models, but just about every poll showed that 18-29-year-old voters would be 15% of the vote. i personally thought that was a pretty good guess based on what we were seeing. it was higher in '12 than it was in '8. now, just for the sake of clarification and accuracy, they voted for obama in lower numbers. he got -- depending upon which poll you look at -- 67, 68% of that vote four years ago, he only got 60 this time. but that's a little higher than where he was polling. he was polling in the mid 50s for the most part. so very impressive achievement
3:24 pm
for obama. what i think the republicans have to do -- and, by the way, he lost independents. he lost independents by six points. that's a 14-point swing from four years ago. there are not a lot of people who would have guessed that you'd split the catholic vote, lose white catholics by ten and lose independents and still win. but, again, because of this coalition that stan was mentioning, he was able to eke out a victory. but this was a victory in a status quo election where the republicans kept the house, democrats keep the senate, republicans maintain their advantages in statehouses and state legislatures that i don't think really translates into a big policy shift. what the republicans have got to do is they've got to figure out a way to keep their small business, hunter and sportsmen, frequently-mass-attending catholic and evangelical coalition, and they've got to add to it. and the most likely place that they could add would be among
3:25 pm
hispanics. as recently as 2004, republicans got 44% of the hispanic vote. they won a majority of the hispanic vote in the critical state of florida, and they got 45% of the hispanic vote in ohio, and they got 16% of the african-american vote in ohio. o -- so we know that it can be done. but i think we thought that obama's failure to fulfill his promise of comprehensive immigration reform would hurt him among hispanics. it was the opposite. i mean, counterintuitively it was brilliant not to do it. he broke a central campaign promise to one of the most important and dynamic constituencies in the electorate, but he got away with it. why? because by keeping it on the table, the republicans got malpositioned as an anti-latino/border security party instead of a party that
3:26 pm
was welcoming of those voters. so it very much worked to to his advantage. he got a higher share of that vote than he got four years ago. and my message to the republican party would be that if you want to be competitive in national elections, you better start figuring out a way to get at least 38% of the hispanic vote. i don't know if i mentioned this or not, i'll end with this. if i did, just cut me off because i'm running on about three hours of sleep. but if you take how ronald reagan did in 1980 when he carried 43 out of 50 states and defeated an incumbent president by a larger margin than fdr beat herbert hoover, if you take those -- how he did among those various subgroups, women, african-americans, asians, hispanics, 18-29s and so forth and you overlay his performance in 1980 over this electorate, he loses by the same amount that
3:27 pm
romney did. so this is a clear, long-term demographic problem for the republican party. the country's becoming more diverse, the countries aging, um, and this is going to present some challenges for the party. i'm relatively optimistic that they can find ways to build bridges to those voters, but they need to get about it, and they need to get about it right now. >> ralph, you talked a lot about demographics, and we have two other panelists we haven't heard from yet, but since you're leaving early, i do want to ask: you didn't mention the issue frame of the conversation in the christian conservative community. it does seem, to me, to have evolved. can you talk about foreign policy or gay individuals and how the christian community is now or conservative christian community is looking at those issues? >> yeah. i mean, we're still looking at the postelection survey that we, um, commissioned, that we got
3:28 pm
very early this morning, about 5 a.m. but the preliminary evidence is pretty consistent with what i've seen throughout my career, you know? there's a tendency to sort of caricature and stigmatize voters of devout faith and sort of suggest that they live in trailer parks, and they're poor, not educated and easy to command, and they cling to their guns and their religion, and they vote on gay marriage and abortion. not true. if you look at the evangelicals who voted yesterday, they voted on the economy and jobs by the exact same percentage that the entire electorate did. to put it in biblical terms, it rains on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. so evangelicals and faithful catholics are underwater on their mortgages. they're also struggling. they're trying to figure out how they're going to send their kids to school. so they voted largely on the economy and jobs. to a lesser extent, on deficit and spending. you look at issues like same-sex marriage and abortion, and it's less than 10% of what drove
3:29 pm
them. i think the thing you're alluding to, jennifer, that has been a big change since i got involved, you know, 30 years ago with this constituency is how important foreign policy has become to them and particularly their strong support for the state of israel. i wouldn't say every mailing we sent out, but just about every mailing that we sent out mentioned either obama removing jerusalem as the capital of israel from his platform and then belatedly reinserting it, or it mentioned his call for israel to return to '67 borders, or it mentioned the fact that his administration had slow-walked sanctions against iran. and those issues have real resonance among pro-israel evangelicals. >> jonathan saw hasn't is one of washington's most thoughtful journalists. he's been covering this sector for a long time, and thank you, ralph, for your comments. he is the money and politics reporter for bloomberg, and he's
3:30 pm
also the past president of the national press club. what did you see yesterday, and what does it mean for the country? >> well, in 2010 we saw all this secret money into the races, and the republicans took control of the senate and the house, and all observers said this is just going to be a foreshadowing of 2012. it wasn't. obama was able to raise as much money as romney. romney had help with some of the super political action committees and outside groups, the republican national committee, but the money was even. obama wasn't swamped. he was able to match romney's spending dollar for dollar. the difference was obama raised the money himself in small amounts, and, ralph, you know about how important it is to get people energized. you give $10 to a campaign or $20 to a campaign, you'll probably give it again in a couple months.
3:31 pm
you'll probably make a phone call. you'll probably tell your friends. and in 2008 he was able to have this whole army of small-dollar donors that he could go to again and again and raised more than a third of his money from small donors. also by obama raising the money himself, when you buy television time, the television stations have to give you the lowest unit rate, the cheapest ad rates they have goes to a candidate. of it doesn't go to a super pac. doesn't go to a party. so obama raising $500 million is worth a lot more in terms of ad time than romney and the republican committee and the super pac raising $500 million. the one thing obama couldn't do, as he did in 2008, was expand the playing field. he had raised $200, $300 million more than john mccain and could go into places like indiana and north carolina. this time he didn't need to do that. in fact, he could lose those two and still win with more than 300 electoral votes. but romney, because he was able to match obama dollar for
3:32 pm
dollar, did have the money -- again, with the help of the outside groups -- to try to make a last ditch effort to go to pennsylvania, michigan, minnesota and expand the playing field for him. the other thing we notice on the money was obama spent a lot of it early. you saw these reports obama's spending more money than he took in, the democratic national committee had far less money in the bank than the republican national committee. that money had all been sent to the states much earlier. so the fund raising -- the get out the vote operation had months' head start over the romney campaign according to the money. romney had a lot more money in the bank, his joint fundraising committee had all this money in the bank, the republican national committee had all this money in the bank, obama and the democrats had already sent it out to the state committees, and they were spending trying to get their get out of the vote operation. and in the first panel we had heard about -- one of the panelists mentioned that karl rove was the big loser of 2012. we have to add another name to
3:33 pm
that, scott reid. the u.s. chamber of commerce won about one or 14 or 15 senate races they played in. it also intervened in the missouri race in the primary, and their candidate lost to todd akin. so even with all that money, it didn't effect the races that the democrats knew about this outside money which they didn't know in 2010 and were prepared themselves. they had their own super pacs, their own outside groups, and they were able to win a lot of those races and, basically, money they were on parity. >> thank you, jonathan. i'm going to turn it over to jim pinkerton who served in the reagan and bush administrations. he's also a political analyst with the fox news channel, and he's a regular on fox news. so what do you think happened last night, and what does it mean for america? >> well, thank you, jennifer. and i apologize for being late. i was late for reasons i'll get into in a moment. um, you know, look, i worked in
3:34 pm
the political affairs office under ed rollins way back in the stone age, so i can never resist sort of crunching the numbers a little bit, and i'm very sorry to have missed what stan said because, um, there's two ways of interpreting, if you will, how romney did versus president obama last night. on the one hand, it is extremely hard to defeat an elected incumbent president, okay? since 1900 through 2004 ten of fourteen elected incumbents were reelected. now, of course, it's 11 out of 15. it is a daunting challenge to beat somebody. the white house tends to turn over when there's an open site seat, as it were. to put it another way, only once since 1896 has a president and a party lost the white house after only four years.
3:35 pm
usually a single-term president is followed by presidents of the same party or succeeds them. that was jimmy carter in 1980. the democrats came in in '76, ad the democrats swept the white house. so only once in 116 years has somebody succeeded in doing what governor romney tried and failed to do last night. so in that sense you can say, look, it was sort of more likely than not that this president would find himself reelected. on the other hand, the republicans have now lost four of the last six presidential elections, and if you count the popular vote, it's five of the last six. something has gone wrong here. from the first 13 decades of the republican party's history from 1860 to 1988, the republicans won 21 out of 33, and now
3:36 pm
they've lost four out of six. and that's a, that's something that republicans -- again, there'll be a lot of soul searching as time goes by, starting today. on the other hand, you know, john boehner can say that he won a mandate as well. any member of congress in either party is happy to remind you that the legislative branch is mentioned first in the constitution, executive branch is second. they're all allegedly equal, but still anybody who works on this capitol hill will tell you, no, no, we're first. and the president proposes and congress disposes. and, you know, some of the reasons ralph touched on, i'm sure the republicans are feeling optimistic about the 14 midterms and so on in terms of is second midterm elections.
3:37 pm
tend, not always, but tend to go well for the party out of power. but i think the real takeaway is sort of the continuity of the concept of divided government. since world war ii the one party has controlled both the white house and both houses of congress for only 28 out of those 67 years, okay? 39 out of the 67 years since world war ii the power in this town has been divided, and so you have to conclude that there's, at some level the american people kind of like that. because they keep voting for it again. and they just voted for it again last night for at least another two years. now, so those are the interpretations, at least some interpretations. as for implications, i can sort of put them in three categories. one is issues that the two parties tend to agree on, and that's a fairly small group of issues they tend to agree on.
3:38 pm
one notable, and i confess that i work for something called the rate coalition which works on this issue, is the corporate income tax. it was striking during the campaign that both, in the debates that both president obama and mitt romney agreed on lowering the corporate rate. it's the highest in the world. they had to bring that down. they didn't agree on every last issue concerning that, but they certainly had the general idea in common. and so i think as we look to fiscal cliffs and grand bargains and so on, there is some considerable grounds for optimism that a corporate tax agreement will be in the package. as for disagreements, the one that immediately leaps to mind is energy. keystone pipeline. i think that was -- if you had to sum up, you know, the mitt romney energy agenda and the house and congressional republican energy agenda, it begins with the k word, keystone
3:39 pm
pipeline and look to see what happens on that one. sort of to use the old isaac as move analogy, we've got the irresistible force of energy consumption and the immovable opposition of co2 and global warming which, obviously, got a boost in the wake of hurricane sandy, and we'll just have to see what happens. another category was -- things that didn't get talked about, and i think that's very unfortunate, first on that list i would talk about health care defined as medicine, defined as curing things. we've had for, you know, since the clinton era we've had the abundant discussions of health care finance, health care insurance, who should get insured, who shouldn't get insured, so on and so on. and during the same 20-year period, the number of -- the quantity of medicine actually emerging from the
3:40 pm
medical/scientific pipeline has plummeted. the number of new drugs approved by the fda is now 53% in the last 15 years, the number of new medical devices is down 40%, new antibiotics is down 80%, the amount of venture capital in the field is down anywhere between one-third and three-fourths depending on which source you look to. but nobody thinks it's going the up. in other words, we're in this paradoxical situation, and president obama's re-election will only enunciate this further. we are committed to taking care of everybody in this country on their health care. truth of the matter is we've had a sort of crude version of national health insurance since the emergency treatment and labor act of 1986 which was signed by president reagan that says you can go to an emergency room and get treated. that is not a particularly satisfactory way to do health care, but it is a way, and noboy ever disputes that would ever stop happening in the future no
3:41 pm
matter who had won the election last night. but, again, we now have an enhanced and sort of mandated in the sense of election mandate commitment to if you're an american, you know, citizen or not you're going to get coverage, you're going to get treated, you're going to get everything. and so the challenge then is how do you make it cheaper? six million americans in this country today have alzheimer's, and that's a $172 billion hit on the economy according to the alzheimer's association. and, again, jennifer -- who's done great work on this, has some pieces of paper on your chairs which i would call your attention to on this -- it is very hard to see how anybody whether it's the obama administration working or not working with, you know, paul ryan who will be returning to the congress or the gang of six or simpson-bowles, anybody who is wrestling around with these issues how you're going to make progress long term on medicare
3:42 pm
costs with alzheimer's which, again, now six million people, $172 billion. thirty years from now, 25 million people and an annual cost of a trillion dollars or trillions, plural, and for a cumulative cost between now and '50 of 20 trillion, trg with a t. -- trillion with a t. that's a lot of money and all the market forces, all the empowerment l, better management aren't going to change the fact that if people are in a state of dementia for 20 years in a nursing home, that's a very labor-intensive and very costly process. and i think it's very unfortunate, um, that these issues did not get raised during the campaign. my friend lou who's in the audience here started up a group called the american center for cures which has been pushing the idea that a cure is cheaper than care, it's cheaper to beat a
3:43 pm
disease than to treat a disease. and so he and i met with dr. frank sis collins at -- francis collins at the nih this morning. the meeting ran long because it's such a robust topic, and that's why i'm late. i apologize again for that. i do think, and maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part, but the urgency of the situation to make budget cuts that are, that don't lead to the political destruction of the people making them -- and i speak for both parties now, i mean, again, the one lesson of 2010 is when the republicans came out against the affordable care act, they had the medicare cuts in there, the obama administration's cuts to the med tear advantage program, and they made hay out of that, bigtime. and in 2012, again, all the exit polls have to get crunched and everything, but it certainly seems as if the revival of that statement, the so-called $716
3:44 pm
million cut in medicare, the affordable care act put into place, did seem to take a lot of the sting out of the democrats' attacks on paul ryan and the budget and so on. so they kind of played each other to a draw. but sort of a strange situation now. we go into '14 where we've certainly had lessons in the voters just don't like medicare cuts. now, if the medicare cuts and changes and vouchers, premium support, whatever you want to call it, are inevitable for fiscal reasons, so be it. but then that puts an enormous incentive to people like dr. collins and lou wiseback and jennifer who can think of ways to help mobilize the country on behalf of actually solving some of these medical problems. you know, we don't spend money on polio now because we cured polio. the milliken institute two or three years ago revived, found
3:45 pm
an old study that the government had done in 1950 in which it had projected that if present trends on polio treatment -- which is to say wheelchairs and iron lungs -- continued through 2000, the cost would have been about $100 billion a year which is greater than the budget. that would have been pretty daunting for anybody's budget-balancing plan. and, instead, happily in 1995 dr. jones saw sort of effectively a public/private partnership, cured polio, the disease went away, and we don't spend anything on polio anymore. at least not in this country. so that's, actually, an interesting 60th anniversary that president obama is going to confront in his term, 2015 is the 60th anniversary of the polio vaccine. there's also one anniversary that while i think of it will
3:46 pm
also be coming up in president obama's term which is in november of 1944 as world war ii was coming to a close, president roosevelt wrote a letter to a fella named van bush who was head of r&d for the pentagon and said, listen, we've had this wonderful, heroic, world-saving effort to mobilize technology and radar, and, you know, proximity views, you know, all number of inventions, synthetic rubber and, of course, the atomic bomb, and we need now to bring that same miracle of progress and sort of organized, concerted effort to the civilian front including medical care. and that document, again, it became sort of the founding agenda document for the whole postwar effort by completely bipartisan -- truman, eisenhower including the kennedy/johnson
3:47 pm
space mission -- to put the curve ending from science front be and center into national policy. and i think it's been unfortunate that that scientific emphasis has spun off of the national agenda over the last few years, and i think we've all paid a price for it not only in terms of our own health, but the future costs for medical programs. and now i'm optimistic we can find a way to get it back on the agenda in this second term. i would point to, for example, president obama's science adviser, the council of advisers of science and technology. if you look at a document that doesn't seem to have gotten any attention, but it did get published from the executive office of the president on september 25th, a call for a doubling of the new medical drugs and treatments. doubling. i think that's a much more refreshing and, frankly, politically popular approach to take as we think about health care issues as opposed to budget
3:48 pm
cuts. and i hope, frankly, both parties take it up in the next few years. >> so jim has just put a serious policy issue on the table. this is a partisan, you know, environment that we're in. we're inside the u.s. capitol here, or steps from the capitol inside a committee room. there's not much that happens in the washington today because of the partisan fighting. um, is there room after this agenda where we just spent $6 billion in a campaign beating each other's brains out and came up with the same president, the same congress and the same senate for serious, bipartisan efforts on curing diseases like alzheimer's or any other short of agenda? ralph or stan, we start with somebody from a partisan perspective. >> well, let me put the this on my wish list. i'm sure this seems like it's going to be a partisan comment.
3:49 pm
the -- i looked at ralph's reaction to this, um, where he said that if we look at what the pattern of who votes in the 2010 election, if that is replicated in 2014, um, then we will, then we can have a big pushback against the democrats, okay? the -- now, that's a formula, because that's what happened in 2010. 2010 set up 2012. that is, the extremism of the tea party, the polarization set up the 2012 election so that we have a, we have a situation where republicans have won the most votes in only one election since, national election since 992. they're not a viable national party. they can't elect presidents of the united states. if their strategy for 2014 which the, you know, the majority leader, you know, or the republican leader in the senate
3:50 pm
seemed to say, then we're not going to get there. they're going to minimize the determination of in the election. now, if you focus on this election, it's a landslide battleground election. we'll assume we have the president over the majority of the vote. by the way, there aren't many presidents who got the majority of the vote, including bill clinton, and we're seeing the number will go up. so i think his actual overall vote are instant. the underlying consequences of the trend are even more serious, and i think it's possible that people say, indeed, there needs to be some period of, you know, in the lame duck and maybe even early in the next year where republicans learn or seem to have learned. it is a misreading of the senate election to say it's status status quo. and it's misreading to say this is a nonevent because incumbents always get reelected. no oecd leader since the
3:51 pm
financial crisis has been reelected since merkel. incumbent leaders across the globe, this is a unique period, have gotten slaughtered, and it was amazing that this president got elected. and these forces that we've talked about -- including the republican brand -- enabled them to win this that context. >> what does that mean for policy? >> well, no, no. what i'm saying is, the question is, do they in the days after this say that if we're going to be a national party, then we have to think about this differently. i think there are areas in which you could move to reach action. by the way, if you look at what they did on the ryan budget, they didn't run on the ryan budget. they tried to muddy up the health care reform by saying they want to do more medicare cuts than us, you know? we're battling over who's the bigger medicate cut. -- med caid cuts. -- medicaid cuts. the tea party partisans who got
3:52 pm
reelected hid from that in order to get reelected. my wife, liberal congresswoman rosa delaurel, as evidence of being bipartisan. so they didn't run as tea party republicans seeking to get reelected. so maybe when they come back, they'll look at what happened in the senate which was a sweep, and they'll look at this overall and say we've got to do something. immigration as a start, tax reform as a start, energy, i mean, i could put a whole series of things on the table. maybe even implementation of the affordable care act. there are a whole range of things one could do if you've made a decision that we would benefit from learning from this election. >> um, i'd like to respond to that by pointing out, first of all, that a lot, a lot of these victorious democratic senate candidates ran as far from barack obama as it was possible to do and still be in the same
3:53 pm
party. today just for fun google or go to youtube and watch maybe the last ten heidi heitkamp ads in north dakota, you know? for the keystone pipeline, for increasing coal production, for drilling offshore for oil, for fixing obamacare. i mean, joe donnelly, okay, he beat richard mourdock in indiana, but the idea that people were voting for keeping obamacare as is and for his spending agenda, it's not just backed up by the day -- data. joe donnelly is as pro-life, pro-marriage and fiscally conservative as you can be and be a democrat and be in the party. look at, look at tim kaine who was chairman of the dnc two years ago. he's basically running ads criticizing barack obama on raising taxes on small business. in virginia.
3:54 pm
so i just don't think it's going to wash to say that this is an across-the-board repudiation of where conservatives have been on public policy matters, and it is ipso facto a retention of obama's public policy agenda. i think if you look at the exit polling, a plurality of the electorate is for repealing all or part of obamacare, and most of the democrats -- and believe you/me, i was distributing voter guides if every one of these targeted races. we went to every one of their web sites, we researched every one of their debates. they pretty much said i really don't like it the way it is, i do think we need to allow children under the age of 25 to stay on their parents' policies which was one of the key elements of obamacare. and we ought to keep the previous condition provision.
3:55 pm
but beyond that, we have got to fix it. i'm against the individual mandate, i'm against the $2,500 fines on small businesses. they were very critical of the program. so, you know, we'll see what happens. i would stay there will be openness, whether there will be bipartisan progress, i can't really say because i can't speak to how the white house will approach this. but there is a strong desire to -- i'm not sure i want to, you know, throw the red meat in the shark tank of comprehensive immigration reform because that gets very complicated. but i think there could be progress on immigration. if you look at what rubio's proposed oiz own version of the dream act, you could have some hybrid who of what rubio's propd and what obama's proposed. with regard to your specific question which is increased funding for some of these
3:56 pm
dreaded diseases, sure, i think you could have bipartisan consensus is on that. i think if you go back to the previous decade, you know, there was a embryonic versus stem cell research. we had deep and grave moral concerns about the harvesting of embryos in order to get those cells. i think, you know, we may have lost the political battle on that, but scientifically speaking the greatest advances on stem cell research have taken place with adult stem cells. so if we can find those areas of agreement, i think there'll be a great amount of interest in finding some cures and scientific breakthroughs like jim was talking about that would move out beyond just saying, you know, we're going to have to cut medicare by, you know, $10 trillion over the next 50 years. >> i'm going to let jonathan respond, and then let each panelist make one prediction on
3:57 pm
what they see ahead. jonathan? >> the question becomes, do people want to work together? and politically if you think you can do better by opposing everything, you'll oppose everything. and if politically you think you can do better by waking out deals the way gingrich and the republican-led congress worked out deals with clinton, they'll work it out. as a matter of both sides being able to come to the table and give and take. >> so that was very fast. [laughter] a journalist. version of what's going on. stan, predictions? >> um, i think the surprise -- not a surprise, may be what happens with health care, health care reform and the implementation of health care reform. because we've talked about this partisan polarization as if there aren't other people involved and when you fete to health care there are -- get to health care there are some people that have to make decisions going forward on how to implement the health care reform law including the insurance companies and health exchanges and governors.
3:58 pm
i think that they're going to, that the interests who want to proceed whether or not they were for it or not are going to be under tremendous pressure to put your head down, implement change but make it a point of progress. it may be very hard to ever come back to obamacare. it came out of this, you know, much more popular, evenly-divided in our polling on obamacare, and the electorate had voted. and i think it'll be an issue of the past as it gets implemented. >> jonathan? >> well, we have a fiscal cliff that has to be addressed or all of a sudden there's cuts to domestic spending and defense spending and the bush tax cuts get repealed because the bill was written that way so they would be repeals, they could fit under federal budget laws. so the question becomes what do they do about it, and receive to get everything else, otherwise taxes are going to go up for
3:59 pm
everybody, and nobody on either party wants to see more people pay taxes. >> before i go to jim, watch the audience on c-span if you want to send me your predictions, go to laszlostrategys.com, send me an e-mail because i'm interested in what people back home are thinking about the future and what this election means. so, jim, you're going to get the last word. ..
4:00 pm
we always have at least for decades now and in terms of production, again i am of little bit what since i just met with the doctor. there is a congressman named rob andrews is a democrat from new jersey who's been in the 11 terms, a fairly senior guy who had an article in the journal in september in which he called for an apollo style effort and said specifically we should be focusing on the lead issue on the wounded warriors and not just paying for their wheelchairs' one and maintenance for the next six years of their life but also looking at putting them back together and helping them walk and getting their brains back fully functional and so on so that is to be an
4:01 pm
unbelievable poignant and powerful argument and i think the moral conscience of the country would be a week so he's talking about a genuinely contumely higher average perhaps to do some innovative financing mechanism that would be to unveil by the end of this year and yes, we have to deal with the fiscal cliff and so on and so on and the reality that we spend $2.6 trillion in health care in this country every year and only about 100 billion, up 4% on medical we see the results in terms of the falloff on the new treatments and i think that is to unite the country around some way to actually make health care cheaper just as we made electronics cheaper using technology as opposed to just
4:02 pm
cutting here and trimming their and so on. there's a new book out about health care and look if it is labor intensive and expensive, period. if you want to make it cheap as well as good and comprehensive, then you have to think about technology and i.t. and i think that rob's bill well as well and will be quite exciting come 2013. >> thank you very much. i want to thank all the candidates who ran for office whether they were a democrat, republican or some other political party for their willingness to serve in this country. i want to thank those engaging in voting which is our highest civic duty for doing that. i want to recognize that we are at a juncture that is very difficult in this country where 49% roughly voted for each candidate, and so we are going to have to come together to heal. so it's great to start on that process by having democrats and republicans together on a panel to have journalists that are thinking thoughtfully about the
4:03 pm
crisis so i want to think of the first panel who is with us today but i also want to thank robb but jim pinkerton and stan greenberg for thank you for what you did not only on the panel but you're serious thinking that you do on these topics day in and day out so on behalf of laszlo strategies, thanks for coming. [applause] is a mandate in yesterday's results for us to find a way to work together on the solutions to the challenges that we all face as a nation. it's not one of confrontation with but one of conviction we face a series of tremendous challenges and a great opportunity. the american people want us to
4:04 pm
work together, republicans want must work together and democrats must work together they want a balanced approach to everything but especially this situation that we have news from capitol hill this afternoon ahead of congress returns next week south dakota senator john thune announced today that he will seek reelection for the chairman of the senate republican
4:05 pm
conference. the third highest ranking republican position. he served as conference chairman since january of this year and previously served as chairman of the senate republican policy committee and as the vice-chairman of the senate republican conference. you can see live coverage of the senate when the members return next week here on c-span2. and next, an event hosted by the u.s. institute of peace looking at the state of security forces in egypt, tunisia and libya. the arab spring are in the state of transition with the army, police and intelligence services playing different roles in each. this took place earlier this week in washington. it's two hours. >> good morning everyone. i'm steve heydemann for issues of the u.s. institute of peace, and we are delighted to see you all here at today's session on
4:06 pm
the securities sector reform in the arab world and some rsvp to me have been scared by the false rumor that it would be subjected to a political polling experience following the panel. that is not the case. so you do not need to worry about that. we are very pleased to have you here with us all this morning. i would like to stress that our topic this morning i think is both particularly important but also especially urgent. i do not think that it is an exaggeration to say what happens with the security sectors in the arab world and by security sectors i mean the police, the armed forces, and most of all of course the very substantial intelligence apparatus that
4:07 pm
exists in every era of duty to arab countries that what happens in this sector of the bureaucracy in the arab world would largely determine the fate of the transitions that began almost two years ago in tunisia in egypt, and only slightly more than of a year and a half ago in libya. if it turns out to be possible to move those securities sectors and the mormon practices and procedures that are consistent with space governments and i think that the possibilities for the success for those transitions would have to be seen as largely favorable. on the other hand if security sectors in the arab world turn
4:08 pm
out to be resistant to reform if it turns out to be more challenging than we might have anticipated to move them indirections consistent with space governments that those transitions will not succeed and that they would produce outcomes that are likely to fall quite short and the expectations and that initiated and participated in these monumental events that have occurred in the arab world based on the justice and dignity and accountability and religion in the relationship between citizens in the state will probably not be realized, that we will find that the outcomes of these transitions produce
4:09 pm
something far short of the democracies that we hope will emerge and generate instead something that might fall in the category of the hybrid regime in which the element of democracy, exists with continued evidence of an undemocratic or even authoritative practice. and unfortunately, there would have been quite a few signs that are troubling with respect to the direction of change in the area of the securities sector reform in the air of defeat to arab world. we have seen libya that we will be discussing this morning, clashes between the militia determined to maintain their authority shaping the tradition we have seen in egypt resistance to reform on the part of the
4:10 pm
security apparatus and in the military. we have seen similar kind of tensions in to tunisia so there are a number of indicators that leave us to question the potential for the reform of the securities sector, and thus with the longer term fate of the transitions is likely to be. however, now that we have almost two years since the start of the mass uprisings in the middle east in the cases of egypt and tunisia we find ourselves at an especially at the appropriate moment for taking stock of progress in the area of security sector reform, of assessing where we see indicators of positive change, where we see
4:11 pm
continuing obstacles to move in security sectors in the more space direction and identifying what we imagine might be possible for the local actors and the international community alike to support progress in the area of the securities sector reform and what some particular strategies might be for advancing those projects in the three countries that would be discussed on the panel today and we are especially fortunate to have with us for this discussion a terrific group of specialists all of whom have significant experience in the field and all of whom have been focusing on the issues of security sector reform even before the uprising began but had been able to bring their significant expertise to
4:12 pm
their work in egypt, libya and tunisia. what they will do from here is have each of the speakers and introduce them all now to take ten to 12 minutes to provide you with some opening comments about the topics listed in the agenda for the meetings and we will then open up the conversation to you come to the audience to explore a further set of questions and concerns that you might have about where the security sector reform is headed. so again, welcome. we will begin in the order and we will follow the order of flying in the agenda for today. our first speaker will be robert perito, the director of the institute for the center of innovation and securities sector
4:13 pm
reform and is a specialist in this field with many years of involvement in the securities sector reform not only in the arab world and internationally. they will be discussing what is the sector to the coverage from to establish a baseline for it that we can build on and further presentations. will be followed querine c.a. that the center for conflict management and peacebuilding here at uspid hooley focusing on the army and the police and tunisia. daniel bloomberg on the center for conflict management who works with one of the most innovative and provocative web site on the arab world, and in particular its work on egypt will be joining them in
4:14 pm
presenting the beat believe could be state in egypt and the final speaker joining us from iran is manal omar on iran, iraq and what africa and who has been perhaps the most uspid staff member involved and spend an enormous amount on the ground on libya and would be assessing the topic of the militia of versus the state the topic of considerable significance of the moment. so, with that, let's get started. the floor is yours. >> i am rob perito and writer of the center at uspid. for those of you state department folks have made this group of geographic experts this is a good topic because after all, popular discontent with the
4:15 pm
repressive nature of the region's security sectors and security forces was the cause of the revolution that we all now called the arab spring. the securities sector in the region were invisible, physical and often dangerous manifestations of the denial of fundamental rights and human freedom in the country. the aftermath of the revolution reform in the securities sector is an essential requirement for progress towards dhaka see unless reform is achieved the path to democracy is blocked in these countries. in the region security is the primary concern of the people and its leaders. in each of these countries, reform in the securities sector is required in order to get the security come in and security as we all know is the basic requirement for the political reconciliation and economic development. while there are common features
4:16 pm
across the board a middle east and north africa, there are also extreme diversity's and we only need to look at the three countries and we are going to be talking about this morning tunisia, egypt and libya to see this come and tunisia and egypt you have three strong mature institutions in libya just recently marked off ghaafi dismantled the institutions and they must be rebuilt from the ground up. the reform of the securities sector will be a determining factor in the success of the arab spring and the international community including the united states has an important role to play. so we need a starting point for this discussion so let's begin with a definition of the concept that is diluted definition most often in the conversations and that is what is the security sector reform. securities act reform is the
4:17 pm
conflict transforming the institutions and operational forces that safeguard the state and its citizens into professional and effective legitimate actors that are accountable to those they serve. ssr can be an instrument for prevention and it can be any effective instrument for conflict management and in a post conflict stage it can be a way of drawing things together and moving forward ssr must be approached in a holistic manner in the framework of space transformation and linked to broad principles like respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and the rule of law. it must be undertaken in connection with another reform process, and that is the reform of the judiciary. the judiciary reform share a common institution delude most notable when these prices eased 04 to cover their mutually
4:18 pm
reinforcing. ssr involves more than returning a pickup and operational forces. it also involves retraining and reorganizing and modernizing and professionalizing the institutions that oversee the force is most often with ministries of defense and interior. but it also involves modernizing and professionalizing the executives come to parliament and the courts that are responsible for providing policy oversight from a budget review and enforcement within the securities sector. ssr is a highly political process. often in the united states we forget this and we tend to look at it as a technical matter. all we have to do is teach the police the right to put on handcuffs and then everything will be fine. i see this as a former director of the international police
4:19 pm
running program in the justice but it's more than that. ssr is a political process and every step that we take and security sector reform and press the process. ssr in power was an element of society and disempowers others and it creates winners and losers. and often it may create more conflict. as a consequence, the first principal of ssr is to obtain the local body in. because the consent and the director and the guidance of local authority is essential as the process is going to achieve. it the second principle which derives from the first is the incorporation of the principles of good governance in the securities sector and this is something which is also often overlooked. it is not a matter of the right kind of gun sight for the tanks and i say this because when i briefed one time on this
4:20 pm
somebody raised their hand and said we have three issues here and then the name of three different gun fights for the tank in this country. the way we choose that will decide everything. it's not that at all. what it really is is a security institution with in these countries that have to be seen by their public as legitimate, as transparent and as a civilian authority established with democratic meaning. now, establishing civilian oversight is not an veazey. in the regional state there is no tradition of involvement in the securities sector often. no cause of civilian experts ready to staff the offices and the committees and the executive parliament and often no legal basis for the circumventing official security and exerting effective control. now ssr is a relatively new concept which involves strategies that are longer-term
4:21 pm
and as a result the government in putting our own, and i'm responsible for some of these programs that passed have been to retrieve very quickly into what we do best which is trained and equipped the security system. these quickly put the boots on the ground but often by doing that, we do it with little regard for oversight management and sustainability. in approaching ssr in the middle east and north africa is the essential that the international community doesn't rush in with quick fixes as we have done often in the past because one of the basic principles of the securities sector reform is to do no harm. the abuse of the security services that used by the security services with the proximate cause of the uprising if you will remember that on december 17th, 2011, be street vendor in a small town emulated himself after being humiliated
4:22 pm
and slapped by a police officer. this act triggered the wave of protest and became the arab spring on the regime. the security apparatus in the states was structured to protect the regime from its people. the institutions of choice for the repression were the police, the security services and the security ministries. it was often a complex overlapping network of agencies with legions of informants, deep penetration into the major institutions in the society and at the bottom there was a large police force. the three issues which i want to call to your attention and then i will close are the following often gets overlooked. we need to think about the intelligence services in which country their domestically focused. they are involved in the minutia of life and they have to be reformed and they have to be
4:23 pm
turned and replaced and focused externally. at the same time the responsibility for the internal security is to be transferred to the interior ministry in the police. the next transitional justice. dealing with crimes committed by the security services during the previous regime is a major requirement for successful ssr. the resolution of popular grievances without a feeling on the part of the society that justice has been achieved or not going to get progress. now, the problem with this is some members in the security services have to be punished and we have to move on but the mass of the security services have to be transitioned into new order for there to be any chance of maintaining and moving forward. so, finally -- >> you have two minutes. >> that is the nicest sound a speaker can hear.
4:24 pm
ssr is a comprehensive government approach to reform on behalf of both international donors and recipients governments and most people here that and think that's impossible we are never going to achieve that. we are never going to get a comprehensive government approach to this. so consequently those of us that elkader have a new suggestion and that is matching a comprehensive understanding of the securities sector with a problem-solving approach with specific request for assistance from the government also understand globally and act locally. understand what you are dealing with, but to go in at a point that you can make a difference. the international community including the united states has long term relationships with the countries in the region. it's beyond the narrow interest like combating terrorism that we
4:25 pm
focus on the reform and established relationships based on the common values and space inspirations. creating a space governments including the reform of the securities sector was the goal of the activist who were in the streets a year or year and a half ago and that has been the goal by the transitional government's. so what is international support perhaps can succeed. >> that was a fabulous overview of just how complicated this to make this transition from a context in which the states are a principal source of insecurity to the citizens through the context in which the states are protecting and defending the rights of citizens. it is an encompassing and inclusive, very demanding shift and you have given us a very
4:26 pm
good handle on the scope of changes on the transition involves. thank you. querine? >> thank you very much, steve. i will talk about the challenge of the securities sector reform in tunisia focusing particularly on the police unless the military for the simple reason that the military. i would take the case of tunisia and said it into some of the points that you made. attacks on the u.s. embassy in september if there was one place in north africa that everyone thought was a good place the was going to succeed it was believed to be successfully transitioned from authoritarian to the space rule and a great cost for optimism more for their refusal on the demonstrators and joined the demonstrations that brought down the government. the at ministry of defense and the armed forces in greece the
4:27 pm
civilian control of the military and the armed forces do not have a stake in the haqqani like the counterparts in egypt to be even in the internal security forces there were causes for hope. deily transition government authorized a study that produced a white paper that identified intelligence of the two issues that really needed to be addressed in the securities sector reform plan and actually put the steps in place to achieve those things. particularly important, something that i do not think it's enough attention is that you have a peaceful transition of government. you have three early transition governments that have an election held in october of 2011 that brought the islamist party to power to form the troika to be even after the election every devotee of the dismantling police state become increasingly apparent.
4:28 pm
they began drafting the constitution for to nisha and about deval to the government drafting process which gives a degree of transparency that was unknown. the police particularly in the open centers began to take over again the internal security function. there were tensions and some isolated incidents of balance, but on the whole there was nothing to cause truly serious alarm that the transition was in danger of being detailed. then we have the attack on the embassy and the escalation of the violent incidents that now appear to be happening on an almost daily basis and to nisha to discuss the top and this change the perception that tunisia is progressing successfully. the growing violence in tunisia is very publicly and very dramatically exposed serious structural and capacity gaps in the securities sector. now, it may seem somewhat fantastic to make the argument
4:29 pm
that the security services of the former police state like tunisia could not prevent the attack on the u.s. embassy or the smaller skill incidents we've seen throughout the 12th. there were internal security officers and that was proven to be hollow. in fact a real number is about 65 and 10,000 of those were recent hires since the election that brought in after the government. it also appears that the security forces under ben ali were underworked and since the class's of the regime is performed to some tickets for the union to demand the prison conditions. they over stage large demonstrations and protests the lack of pay and poor working her ambitions and very interestingly and surprisingly better protection for the police. the police indonesia are afraid -- and tunisia fear they will be
4:30 pm
targeted by the population which sees them as the most visible element of the old ben ali regime and they fear they may lose their jobs and they will be targeted for their activities under the regime. as the military returns, these fears have not been addressed by the new government and this leaves the security services for the exposed and unprepared for their role in the new democratic tunisia. if the practices are to be started what replaces them? and this has not yet been designed and one of the biggest challenges and particularly important one as we see the escalation of the violent incidents is is when are the police actually authorized to use force? we know the apparent lack of competence to handle the escalating violence is not the real fault that remained the most competent or experienced commanders and officers and the internal security service in fact below the new minister of
4:31 pm
interior ben ali is largely intact. we know rules of engagement and operating procedures, training recruitment and promotion of internal security forces remain unchanged. the of the efforts by the minister of interior who's a member of the party and a former political prisoner himself to approach the ministry has been stymied in month public case what is the equivalent of the forces mobilized in tunisia and they were forced to read and find him in the ministry. overall organizational treats with additional information on forces and organizational structures and the ministry itself were the component security forces. and despite the commitment by the government to reform if anything has been accomplished in this last year and this is
4:32 pm
particularly troubling given that one of the central issues that prompted the demonstration but brought down the ben ali regime is the impunity of the internal security forces. the key leaders many of whom suffered the abuses of the previous regime firsthand haven't married reform of the police and i think there are too broad ways that we can answer the question. the first is related to the legal framework. performing the security center is an enormous task and one that is very difficult if not impossible to accomplish. indeed even more difficult to do so if there is in any meaningful way if you don't have a legal framework which should be established in tunisia's constitution that is still being drafted. furthermore the government is a caretaker government that has the mandate to rule while the new constitution is being drafted it doesn't have as a surly and mandate to implement reform. without a new constitution come
4:33 pm
any reforms were undertaken to have to be done based on assumptions about what this remark is going to be rather than the actual knowledge of what it is. the a requested to help us fill the gap by providing equipment and it's been very frustrating because little if anything has been provided. many of the donor countries particularly the europeans have been hesitant to provide any corporate or training without the needs to authorities and the new oversight measures. the reform of the securities sector is also an enormous task because it is addressing not just the lack of forces and equipment or the lack of training and appropriate skills and accountability but more broadly is to redefine the role of the security forces and the new tunisia and the culture of the security institutions particularly in heavy moi as was the case under ben ali or to
4:34 pm
protect the population and the government. the second is a political one and it reminded us as a political process that is true. the real political battle in tunisia today is not about addressing the impunity of ben ali's security forces. it is more fundamentally about renegotiating tunisia's social contract. what is the role and the process of the government. what is the deride force of legitimacy and the rights of the citizens. they've been fighting it for a difficult battle. there is a fundamental political battle right now and tunisia among the islamists both moderate, and between the islamists and the secularist moderates. to the progress of the reform in the securities sector and more broadly with the constitution drafting process as well.
4:35 pm
it appears that it has been a wake-up call but its international reputation and its relationship has been damaged. tunisia depends on tourism, trade and unemployment has continued to grow in the past year and tourism isn't going to recover if they cannot address security problems. when this happened, the constitution drafting process has to be completed to provide the framework so they can take place. but meanwhile, the government needs to begin building a consensus within the security ministries and within its coalition across party lines and among the public more broadly it is a priority and has to begin with the police, the police have to have a stake in tunisia and they have to feel protected and they will need new guidance and training about the role is and how they can exercise that role. and the government needs to publicly commit to the need for reform, engage the population and manage expectations. without such commitment the
4:36 pm
progress can be made and tunisia's. >> there are also some important lessons in the presentation because it highlights that even the securities sector reform as a process contains a large number of generic elements that would be inappropriate to imagine that it is possible to implement programs on the basis of a one-size-fits-all template to stress the army is in the principal focus is the ministry of interior. what we also i think at some confirmation of is that it's critical to address the sources of resistance to the security sector reform among the key participants in that process. the police have concerns unless those are addressed it is difficult to imagine progress moving forward, and finally the
4:37 pm
relationship point between ssr and transition and how the integration of those efforts or friction among them reflect the process. very important observation to stand on the table so thank you very much. >> i'm going to lead the lion's share of the presentation. he's the principal that you may have gotten before this meeting were at this meeting itself. i also want to recognize my two colleagues are not only my colleagues but many respect the teachers because as we went through tunisia together in the subject or to your right. >> i know a lot about the subject traveling with my colleagues by helping in letting
4:38 pm
their paper and my paper as well, and i am speaking from the perspective of the comparative list who has jumped into this subject by far and i just going to share a few points and say the purpose of the disclosure is not only one of appeals is a ph.d. student at georgetown university and happens to be the adviser on the panel at this very moment, but he is not only a student but he really respect the colleague and he's been associated for about four years now on any project, so many respects. he is a veteran and we were working on these projects long before so i just want to point those out. very quickly, why is it so difficult to advance the security sector reform? it seems to be the two key issues and if you compare the securities sector reform and save the middle east and latin america, there you have these extra option contracts. so you agree to pay off the military, provide certain types
4:39 pm
of perks and may be set aside on the corporate interest to be protected they were pretty happy to step aside and allow the civilians to turn into the government. and of course in the middle east security sector is allowing a great deal of indigenous institutional and book critic and economic interests. you have the deep state which we are to talk about and they're forgetting the military to extract themselves from their involvement is not just a matter of the kind of symbol pay off. there are much deeper interests and there is a web of interests leaking the economic actors to the international actors and that makes the whole process much more complicated. this huge to that in the arab world's struggle to create a social contract is also a struggle over issues of identity and in what ways we are going to structure the relationship in the state. it's a critical issue, and to the extent that it's within the
4:40 pm
camp and secularists magnify the perception of not only the military with the interest that the military's departure from politics provided protection and the groups particularly the question is it tunisia to be honest the reality is many secular groups look to the security apparatus to protect them from the islamists and to some extent one needs to say the same thing about liberals in egypt that they look to the military command that protection is threatened there is a dynamic that really magnifies the capacity of the devotee to exploit the transition in order to signal to those groups that were protected that they are going to pay high cost and that doesn't seem at all in the case of tunisia and the police several hours to get back to school apart from the embassy to get back to that school which was nearly burned down i think the military and security apparatus and tunisia are
4:41 pm
signaling its own district situation, so we have these tremendous kinds of constraints. tunisia did seem like a very positive case in the beginning. the military stepped aside and in contrast the military was the arbiter and the reality was the two groups were left to negotiate among themselves but now we have a tremendous polarization and the intolerance in tunisia and now you have the intolerances the polarization between the two and that is magnified in the capacity of the security apparatus to manipulate the situation to its advantage and that has had an additional impediment. i will leave my remarks there and expand on the case. thank you. >> thank you very much. i should start off by thanking you for organizing this panel to come here and speak to you
4:42 pm
today. i shall also thanks steve for the overly generous introduction i should say and it's really wonderful and it's a pleasure to be back here to be presenting along side this group of people including two of my advisers so it's great to be here. >> as you all know the topic of the securities sector reform is very timely right now. i think in light of the recent violence we are also very quickly approaching the first anniversary of the battles of november 19th thru 24th of last year when the brutality led to the eruption clashes that left for the institute of peace and reforming the securities sector
4:43 pm
institution and is objecting and meaningful oversight and accountability has been at the forefront of the type of demand that the popular mobilization that has swept the country. >> nevertheless, with almost two years passing since the 18 days of the 2011 uprising we unfortunately find that progress in advancing the securities sector reform agenda in egypt remained and as many recent reports reduced by the international and exist in human rights organizations have shown to continue and there have been very little seriousness on the part of the egyptian authorities to engage with civil society initiatives and proposals to restructure and be consistent and reinvent the remark of the
4:44 pm
government's and that has hardly been touched by this revolution will he dismissed the longest serving leaders inside the military establishment and focused now on egypt quote on quote under the system in which the civilians control the military and they would be willing to give up its longstanding anti-democratic i should say political and economic privileges and there is no -- there is no clear signal that it is willing to subject itself to the space standards of accountability and transparency. for example a few days ago the head of the central accountability agency announced that he is still unable to this day to what it in the economic enterprises that are owned by
4:45 pm
the military and that are engaged in the civilian production of the services. -- also a deeper concern the current draft of the constitution has prepared by the constituent is contained in language that is not dissimilar to what the military sponsored government has quoted last year as to what was known as the document specifically on the article sent to the military and its activities as its budget about and beyond the reach of the public accountability and the parliamentary on the accountability as well. and to add to all of this, it is credible and a widely accepted remark that could effectively bring to justice current and former security officials suspected of the past wrongdoing especially the protesters before and since the outbreak of this. so, in short i think it is fair to say that there is a long road
4:46 pm
ahead and bringing to egypt security establishment the type of change that lives up to the expectations and demands of the january 25th revolution. where do we go from there? i think there are a lot of uncertainties ahead and there are a lot of political battles to be resolved in the constitution and the parliament that is expected to be scheduled to be elected after some kind of a constitution is ratified. yet that the less said, one thing's for sure which is the fact of the boundaries and prospects for the securities sector reform in egypt will in no small part depend on the type of leadership that the president morsi is willing to exert in the coming months. what we can see are the two main unaccountable centers of power that are exerting undue influence over the executive.
4:47 pm
the first one is as i mentioned entrenched bureaucratic power that have been inherited from the era. the influence and the sway of the so-called state is reflected by the fact that the sponsored government with morsi consists of primarily one side insiders to the bureaucracy to the prime minister himself and as the others in the bureau which seems to have started presidential advisers and aides not only strong links to the muslim brotherhood but particular individuals presumably in order
4:48 pm
to fear the presidency and to various positions towards a favorable direction and all of that of course from behind the scenes. so the question remains to be seen whether the president morsi would choose to break these very powerful unaccountable special interests and for the principal of the popular sovereignty and the revolution demands for the reel trends for the change in the institutions particularly the security sector. what i am saying is president morsi who needs to decide what are his military and domestic security establishment on the -- about to reach any possible security sector reform strategies or is the muslim brotherhood wine is the red line
4:49 pm
the people as many of the partisans of the january 25th revolution have since the outbreak of the 18 days? so this is the essentially the critical question that president morsi is facing and within that context i think there are a number of important structural factors that are going to be important here. the first one as was alluded to in the past experience we have learned that it is very difficult to build effective political coalitions are not the national institutional reform agendas and in the presence of the strong position in the political community across the islamist divide which is something that is happening in egypt today in light of the fierce battles over the constitution. also the increase in the national security challenges i think it's likely to increase this way and influence of the
4:50 pm
security organizations in the elected leaders which will make the job of the elected civilian leaders to affect the security sector reforms really difficult. and finally, i think that the economy is going to be critical, and i can't emphasize this point enough because one thing that we point out is that reform -- diem do influence that the ministry of interior has accumulated over mubarak's's last decade in power is in large part attributed to the need for the strong apparatus that could contain socioeconomic grievances and protest movements that were mobilizing around the socio-economic grievances the were generated by decades of pursuing the non-transparent mobilizations, so as the president morsi and the government choose to pursue the same line of policies of the president morsi wants to sort of
4:51 pm
-- if he will continue what mubarak started in egypt the would only deepen his dependence of the egyptian state and the apparatus that could contain the unfulfilled demand for bigger force social and economic and i think this is important. we need to think about it chronically in light of the ongoing negotiations between the international monetary fund and buddy egyptian government. i hope i didn't go over. >> that was fabulous citing laying out a very detailed summary of the state of play and highlighted one of these issues in the process of the securities sector reform and engaged as bob mentioned of the securities sector reform is a process that produces winners and losers but the forces do not exist in
4:52 pm
balance. there is an asymmetry that affects the dynamic of the securities sector reform and egypt the potential winners are fragmented, not well organized, under resources, generally do not comment the institutional resources and those who would be the losers of security sector reform will that shapes the relationship between the two an important ways i hope we can unpacked a little further in the question-and-answer session and end time to the critical case of libya which has been very much in the headlines recently and invite manal omar to give a perspective on the state in libya. the screen is yours. >> thank you very much, steve. what i thought i would do is kind of go over some of the recent activities and the implications rather than going into the institutional changes
4:53 pm
particularly because the libyan government has just recently formed the new government parliament and the crucial issue to highlight is unlike egypt or tunisia where it was a relatively peaceful revolution with one that involved international intervention and military intervention for nato and called into question what is the responsibility afterwards a year-and-a-half later with the security situation on the ground and the international role in securing and stabilizing the country. more important this issue something that was in parallel as people were talking about the necessity of forming the rubble of was a question of what happens later if the rebellion is successful what are you going to do with all of the arms in the country. at that time the formation of the transitional council had reassured people that there would be an element of control and in reality we have to acknowledge there was control for a long period of time as the
4:54 pm
negotiations were going on in the government to comfortable which was won they are looking to stand on further but even before the fall there was a question of what happened with all of these arms entering the country. as i mentioned there were many worrying trends. steve mentioned the recent activities and this was the biggest fear for the libyans on the ground in terms of what happens if the government can't bring in the militias and the overall question of security. i think they tried to convince what took place in the council that really brought on the spotlight but more importantly with the events in terms of where does the militia play. but within the last 24 hours the security committee which is one of the larger militias have been attacked as you heard on the news the headquarters it comes to the question the way that we frame the libya and asks where is the state?
4:55 pm
it is militia verses militia and at the same time we saw when the state did call for the resignation as the chief of police bengazi we are not ready to give in and you see a lot of this ability not only internally but within the last 24 hours, so the security institutions are said to be protecting are also being attacked and as you know before there isn't one particular militia but their tends to be many and even in the supreme committee its splintering off itself until you see more fighting just to stand off between the militant and the state but that is one of the most important activities along with the situation in bengazi. but going back to the issue while i was there recently in libya on of the big questions that was asked is that it wasn't necessarily just the state responding to a law that was
4:56 pm
issued by the general assembly as much as the response was pulled in the militia that was a part of the siege so there was a question is there some standards or criteria for good militia cooperating and that isn't cooperating. many of the residence will travel to tripoli and i had the opportunity to talk with them pointing out that the issues were in a stronger extent and other areas since they would seem to be cooperating with the gmc they were being sidelined or marginalized but not highlighted as much of the situation but those are kind of a larger activities. but i think if you look at the more mundane and day-to-day cases what you're seeing is that a lot of the communities are now actually turning into the militia for protections of the space in the gmc to protect but even issues that will become a large trigger of conflict in libya you are seeing the militia
4:57 pm
feeding into that conflict as well as a for example in libya the issue of property continues to be one of the main issues being brought forward and with the expectations it would quickly be withdrawn and what tends to happen is where people are tied to militia there is of the book caused by strength and power they are able to take people outside of property and reclaim them to read it isn't uncommon to find they are spray-painted with milledge the names for -- dumoulin shaunna names. this leads to long-term issues that have to be resolved in addition to just the securities sector reform. but what i want to do is focus on some of the implications, one of which i already mentioned much was that the primary reason we discussed with the libyans on the ground why doesn't it face the dnc is because of the security situation. so they are looking to the gmc
4:58 pm
and the trough in used as a strong iron fist to show control. at the same time, you know, you have seen they cannot respond only to the situation but also to their own security so it's not uncommon to storm the gmc even in the discussion if it should be moving to the primary location away from tripoli keeping in mind benghazi so there are not able to provide their own protection let alone expand protection to the country. but i think the other but is important is there was accusations of the government being biased depending on who supports the militia and again domestic symbol of that is a situation going back to the idea of using an iron fist it is quite a dangerous people have given up on due process or building institutions in the long-term change. people are calling for the iron
4:59 pm
fist are not necessarily concerned by the means the end justify the means then you can create the same system that led to the revolution in the first place and i think that that is a growing concern that some people particularly international organizations and human rights organizations have on the ground because you are seeking a larger acceptance for skipping the rule of law or unnecessary tension to process all in the name of security in the stabilization but again, the question of what happened down the line once that precedent has been set. more and more you do hear the organizations asking the question have we exchanged one form of government or one form of the system that led to human rights for another one particularly with amnesty international report which called the militia what's out of

130 Views

info Stream Only

Uploaded by TV Archive on